A tender view through 'The Window'

In the accelerating whirlwind of activity, the celebration of youth and energy that fills the modern world, how many of us pause to contemplate the solitude and inertia we will inevitably face at the end of our lives?

“The Window,” a beautiful film set in the sun-drenched prairies of Argentina's Patagonia region, resists all the temptations of fast action and plot complexity to contemplate the second most important day in the life of a certain Don Antonio, an 86-year-old writer and plantation owner.

The film will be shown at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Historic Yuma Theatre, 254 S. Main St. The screening, part of Arizona Western College Foundation's Thursdays at the Theatre, includes an independent short film and a hosted discussion. Language is Spanish with English subtitles. Run time of the feature is 85 minutes; admission is $5.

The passage of time

The sun rises to find Antonio making plans for the day that probably exceed his stamina. He's just had some kind of serious heart event, and he's confined to bed by doctor's orders. But he's inspired by last night's dream - a memory, actually - about a forgotten moment 80 years before when a pretty baby-sitter stayed with him during one of his parents' house parties.

Presumably because of Antonio's failing health, his estranged son Pablo, now a world-famous concert pianist, will be arriving today after living for many years in Europe. Wanting the reunion to be perfect, Antonio summons a piano tuner and orders the housekeeper to chill his best vintage bottle of champagne.

The loud ticking of Antonio's two clocks, slightly out of sync with each other, possibly symbolizes the fact that he's marching to a different drummer than the industrious folks around him - his house staff and the various professional people who come and go. He loses track of time while writing on his computer, he thinks he's lost some money he hid in a book long ago, he decides to take a walk across the open fields, his walking stick in one hand and his drip IV in the other…

Through a lens, darkly

This film evidently was inspired by legendary Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman's classic meditation on the end of life, “Wild Strawberries.” That was the work which, according to “The Window” director Carlos Sorin, introduced him early in his life to “a cinema for adults.”

Generally, the film's method is one of unpretentious realism. A few details might seem to have symbolic value - the piano tuner finding two old tin soldiers lodged in the strings of the upright piano, Pablo's self-absorbed girlfriend getting a cell-phone signal only by Antonio's bedside, Antonio helping a trapped honey bee or finding some sad victory in being able to urinate unaided.

But mainly these images are left without commentary for our interpretation. In Sorin's words, he intended to make “a movie that would work like a magnifying glass, in which the small and inconsistent details are enlarged.”

The effect of a dusty memory of early childhood, experienced as a scratched and grainy home movie, is a startling image of the narrowing tunnel of a past life that is long out of reach but never really lost.