BULLDOZER

Bulldozer is a tale of two partners in crime caught in a spiral of attraction and violence. The two characters function as archetypes representing money and power, business and politics, greed, and corruption, and how these contrapositions form an interdependent and symbiotic, yet at the same time mutually destructive relationship. Carmen and Sergio are inspired by the real estate tycoons that have reigned on the Spanish Coast since Franco’s regime, and the corrupt politicians enabling them while benefiting from their dirty business. The film takes place a few years after the 1990s real estate boom in Spain, in an elegant beachfront hotel. During an uninterrupted 37-minute zoom shot through one of its balconies, we witness a secret meeting between an urban planning councilman and a construction businesswoman. What begins as a celebration with clear sexual undertones will end up having fatal consequences for both. There’s something eerily contemporary and yet eternal in the contraposition of power and money, something that speaks to our epoch of corporate greed, accelerated capitalism, and the irrational expansion of urban life, in the light of an impending climate disaster.

"The 60 Minute Zoom" is a 1976 short story by British author J.G. Ballard, one of my favorite authors and a constant reference in my work. The story is set in a beach hotel in Lloret de Mar, in which a crime of passion is observed through a camera lens that is performing a continuous zoom through one of the balconies of said hotel. Much of Ballard’s literature employs an unusual cinematic narrative style, and his stories have often been brought to film for a reason: in his writing, he seems to think within and through the camera lens. In "The 60 Minute Zoom", he uses a specific way of narrating that is only possible through a camera: a continuous zoom that allows the main character to get closer and closer to an action taking place in the distance to obtain "proof" of what is happening there, while the reader only “sees” the story through that same lens.

Bulldozer was born out of my fixation to translate Ballard’s literary zoom into cinema, to reflect on this notion of zooming in on an action into its strictest form. Bulldozer is a continuous zoom in a single take: from the façade of a beach hotel, until the last enlarged detail in the bodies of our characters, when all references are lost and the image breaks into its own grain. Bulldozer is therefore circular. As the zoom reaches the maximum of its range, the noise in the image brings us back to the third wall, to the observer, reminds us that we are watching through a lens, and reveals that our gaze is being directed by technology. That “seeing the story through the lens” is what makes Bulldozer an exceptional film that references a technological history of cinema. The novelty of the story does not lay only within its narrative, which excites our collective imaginary about corruption, instead, rather than dwelling into the specificity of the crime it explores the dramatic capacities of the zoom as a framing method. In Bulldozer, the zoom becomes the third wheel in this spiralling combo between Sergio and Carmen, the characters whose fate is declared by the zoom’s relentless, irredeemable advancement.