‘The Endless Trench’ (2019): In It for the Long Haul

Directed by: Jon Garaño, Aitor Arregi, Jose Mari Goenaga || Produced by: Xabier Berzosa, Iñaki Gomez, Iñigo Obeso

Screenplay by: Luiso Berdejo, Jose Mari Goenaga || Starring: Antonio de la Torre, Belén Cuesta, Vicente Vergara, José Manuel Poga, José María del Castillo

Music by: Pascal Gaigne || Cinematography: Javi Agirre Erauso || Edited by: Laurent Dufreche, Raúl López || Country: Spain, France || Language: Spanish

Running Time: 147 minutes

My preferred style of filmic storytelling revolves around tight narratives based on cause-and-effect logic, where most every character action drives the central narrative forward and every sequence is necessary to that narrative’s development. In other words, I prefer character-driven stories edited to the bare essentials where no scene is superfluous, wasted, or “padding,” but also is paced deliberately enough for main characters to grow. Different scripts and genres have different ranges of average runtimes that best pace their stories, but in my viewing experience, most genre films stretch between the 90-minute (e.g. modest or “slow-burn” horror films, satirical comedies, pulpy crime-thrillers, etc.) to 135-minute (e.g. larger scale science-fiction, fantasy-adventure, or action movies) marks. As with anything in the arts, exceptions abound and talented, eclectic auteurs who paint outside the lines (e.g. the Coen Bros., Quentin Tarantino, Terry Gilliam, Sanjay Bhansali, S. S. Rajamouli, Alejandro Iñárritu, Johnnie To, etc.) can break these rules because they’ve learned them so well. In general, though, this is the format of narrative filmmaking toward which I gravitate due to how I argue it works the best for visual storytelling.

The Endless Trench opens with a series of short yet pulse-pounding chases as Francoist nationalist forces comb villages for political dissidents.

As such, I tend to dislike longer, more self-indulgent screenplays with haphazard pacing and lackadaisical, passive, or otherwise unrelatable characters. Biopics of famous people and slice-of-life portraits from major Hollywood and independent studios, respectively, are frequent mainstays of industry awards shows, and are two of the main reasons I gravitate away from awards-bait pictures.

Still, we shouldn’t forget exceptions to artistic trends, and plenty of worthwhile cinematic projects emerge from supposed “boring,” elongated dramas unrelated to any conventional genre formula. Today’s example of that is The Endless Trench (“La trinchera infinita” in Spanish) by the trio of directors Jon Garaño, Aitor Arregi and Jose Mari Goenaga, the latter of whom cowrote the nearly 2.5 hour-long story about a Spanish Republican hiding indoors for 33 years(!) from the reigning Falangist government of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) through the end of Francoist Spain in 1975. The film covers most of that period from 1936 to 1969, around the actual time when the government of dictator Francisco Franco began pardoning Civil War-era political dissidents. Its main character (Antonio de la Torre) appears to be a fictionalized amalgamation of various real-life “moles” of the Second Spanish Republic, many of whom hid from public life for decades until the twilight years of the Francoist regime when Spain began its transition into democracy under the contemporary Kingdom of Spain.

On the one hand, this premise extends a fascinating historical backdrop to The Endless Trench while also limiting the number of extraneous characters due to the script’s claustrophobic indoor setting (the vast majority of the film is restricted to 1-2 household interiors with a couple memorable outdoor chase sequences in the first act). Films set in one or a handful of locations (e.g. Die Hard [1988], Misery [1990], Cube [1997], Panic Room [2002]) encourage creativity on the part of their filmmakers, but on the other hand, the 2.5 hour runtime and 33-year diegetic timespan of The Endless Trench hinted at the bloated storytelling of many overrated Oscar-bait films I’d been tricked into watching over my cinephile life.

I’m pleased to report that the three-pronged directorial team appears to have handled their historical subjective-matter with the creativity expected of a potboiler genre film. To be sure, The Endless Trench is not the best historical drama I’ve seen in the past few years (that would be All Quiet on the Western Front [2022], which benefits from also being a war film), but it commands its unwieldy length with assured pacing, creative cinematography, and, yes, a modest cast to portray an interesting, emotional journey of not just one man, but a family (female lead Belén Cuesta and Emilio Palacios play de la Torre’s diegetic wife and son, respectively) across turbulent sociopolitical upheaval.

The bulk of the film concerns Antonio de la Torre’s social isolation inside his domestic cell (top) and increasingly strained relationship with his wife (bottom), who must pose to the public as a widow for over thirty years.

The bulk of Trench is shot indoors with subtle tracking shots when de la Torre moves outside his modified trapdoor cells or with static shots on long telephoto lenses as de la Torre spies on household events through a peephole from his false wall-hiding spot. A few instances of unstabilized handheld camerawork accentuate the intensity of those aforementioned earlier foot-chases in the arid scrublands of Andalusia, where the film was set, but altogether cinematographer Javi Agirre Erauso maintains tension by keeping his camera locked onto the perspective of our protagonist. Because we never leave de la Torre’s side, much of the film’s muffled sound-editing and hushed, whispered conservations dovetail with the film’s overwhelming shallow focus to create a nonstop sense of paranoia. Additional upticks in domestic violence from outside interlopers legitimize this paranoia and help keep the overall narrative pace snappy.

Top to bottom, The Endless Trench succeeds thanks to its reliable, workmanlike script that paces enough narrative variety and jumps forward in time just enough to allow its claustrophobic cinematography, blocking, and set-design room to breathe. The film is not the most entertaining picture I’ve seen this year and won’t win many general audience converts outside of its native Spain, but it makes the most of its sociopolitical background thanks to its identifiable cinematographic design, smart editing, and dedicated focus to a handful of memorable characters. Combine those features with the subtlest old-age makeup — practical, not digital, mind you — you may see for quite a while, and The Endless Trench exemplifies how powerful cinematic storytelling can be outside the confines of traditional genre filmmaking.

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SUMMARY & RECOMMENDATION: Creative screenwriting and smart direction produce a memorable historical drama that works despite its longwinded runtime, tapping into both visual character growth as well as constant cinematographic tension. If you find yourself with two and a half hours to kill, strap in for The Endless Trench’s dedicated recreation of political self-imprisonment.

— However… the most enjoyment folks will get out of a viewing experience like The Endless Trench is gratefulness they don’t have to live like the main character a la 12 Years a Slave (2013).

—> RECOMMENDED

? Maybe de la Torre should’ve kept a knife or garrote more effective than measuring tape on his person.