La línea del cielo (1983) watch online HD

"Skyline" is the story of Gustavo, a young Spanish photographer who arrives in NYC in the mid-80s planning on being taken on the staff of "Life," "Newsweek," or some other fabulous position. He does have a few friends in NYC, and they sympathize with him, get him invited to parties and to meet agents, and he generally has a pretty decent setup going for him. But, Ah! Love becomes a hassle for a man whose machismo is hammered by his idiot-level English. He does succeed in having a couple of dates, but language remains his stumbling block (not to mention the fact that his photos of NYC are tired, old, clichéd images). As time goes by and nothing seems to be successful for Gustavo, he becomes increasingly depressed and discouraged. But there's hope for Gustavo—he just has to pick up the phone.

This bilingual (Spanish/English) film is based for the most part upon events from the life of its director, Fernando Colomo, when he was endeavouring to market, in New York City, a script that he had written. As with the case of Gustavo (Antonio Resines), a professional photographer and the protagonist of this picture, Colomo's principal difficulty came from his lack of knowledge with the English language as well as from the cultural and social disorder that naturally develops from such a deficiency. Gustavo must find means by which he may be able to vend his portfolio of New York City commercial architecture, while simultaneously achieving fluency in a difficult foreign language. Additionally, he seeks a steady female companion in Manhattan, not an easy proposition to solve for those men who have been born and raised there. One of the film's strengths comes from Colomo's ability to avoid creating a burlesque mode during those scenes wherein Gustavo attempts to establish romantic liaisons with several women. The possibility of any freelance photographer having his work reproduced in a major periodical such as "Life" or "Newsweek" is clearly slender indeed, yet Gustavo will not give up such an aspiration, in spite of damage to his psyche caused by repeated rejection. A comedy drama, the film has achieved increased substance through the frustrated photographer's having subleased a luxurious Village loft during his stay and, moreover, by his expansion of a social framework through renewed contact with long-time Spanish friends who have become permanent New York City residents. The director's embrace of a naturalistic style for the film's narrative technique results in a quasi-documentary tone for the piece, shot entirely in New York. During pages of Spanish dialogue, subtitles are employed in English, and turnabout, all being generally quite accurate. Appropriate pop flamenco scoring is heard during several scenes by Manzanita, an esteemed Spanish group. Talented American director Whit Stillman performs here in an important role and also serves as script doctor, largely responsible for the story's ironic climax. Although this film was well-received at the London Film Festival of 1984, Colomo encountered customary and expected resistance to his essay at marketing it. However, BBC2 purchased the picture and it has been telecast several times in the United Kingdom. While not available in DVD format, SKYLINE is worthy of one's search for still-to-be-found VHS versions. These provide more than adequate visual and audio reproduction.

I haven't bothered to do any research as to any exact dates, but something tells me that things like call waiting and pagers and cell phones exploded in popularity right around the time that Skyline was released in 1983. I doubt very much that this relatively small film played a truly significant role as much as the increasing laziness of society (especially American), but the end of this movie really makes you want to scream out to poor Gustavo that he has a call on the other line.

(spoilers) Skyline starts out remarkably slowly and is talky and slow moving throughout, but by the end of the film you have become so involved with the character and what he is trying to do that you are literally on the edge of your seat when an agent is trying to get through to Gustavo to tell him that he has been offered a series by Life magazine, one of the two magazines that he had been seeking a position with throughout the entire film.

On the one hand, it's easy to see that this is a movie about the broken dreams of people who come to America, the alleged Land of Opportunity, with dreams of obtaining wonderful employment and basically making it to the big time. Gustavo was a photographer from Spain who had a sufficient living in Spain but came to America because he felt that he had progressed as far as he would be able to in Spain, and wanted to do even more. But when he gets to America, he finds that his brand of photography is old news and no one wants to hire him for pictures that have already been taken over ten years earlier.

It's strange that this film is listed as a comedy on the IMDb as well as on the movie box itself, because while there were certainly parts of it that were genuinely amusing (several of which have to do with butchered Spanish and American accents as well as the languages themselves, which is a cheesy comedy technique that almost invariably falls completely flat but works marvelously here), the majority of the movie itself deals with the broken dreams of a photographer from Spain.

Gustavo is an honest man that came to America with hopes of spreading his work more than he was able to in Spain, and while he tries desperately from beginning to end to find work, he is unsuccessful, and then decides to give up and leave for Spain literally right when an agent was trying to call him to tell him that he had found him something with Life magazine. The very end of the film is more of a tragedy than a comedy, although given the fact that the movie as a whole reminded me of Life Is Beautiful, it is comparatively less of a tragedy than that film (although less of a comedy as well, strangely enough).

While Skyline occasionally moves a little too slowly, it is certainly an entertaining film that introduces a likable character and teaches you the importance of perseverance. When in doubt, just give it one more day.

***Get ready for spoilers*** I borrowed this from my local library the other day and watched it tonight. The message of this film is certainly not that if you just keep on trying, you'll succeed. The message is: If the price of success is to have everything you try to do devalued, then success is, in itself, suspect. I do not think this is an anti-American film. Its criticism of America, while valid, is not a hostile one. The viewer must remember that the main character has left Spain for the United States because he feels he's been pigeon-holed in his own country. He returns to Spain after finding that virtually everything he does to advance his career in America is blocked by willfully ignorant social climbers. Here's the big spoiler: Just as the main character locks his New York apartment door behind him for the last time, dropping the keys through the slot for his landlord to retrieve, the apartment phone rings. He misses the news that his photographs have been accepted by LIFE magazine. While we may wish he could get the news that he's finally been accepted, we are supposed to recognize that at this point, he is so exhausted by the runaround people give him that he wouldn't even care if he were told the news. This is not about a loser. This is about what happens to most people who try to succeed. It is refreshing to see something this real. I don't think the main character has reached a desperate place. It's the opposite. He's accepted a bittersweet dose of reality. This is not to say this movie is without anger. It is, indeed, an appeal to the viewer to treat his fellow human being with more understanding.