Abstract

This article examines Iván Zulueta’s masterpiece, Arrebato (1979), as an exploration of the unique relationship between cinema and time. Through analysis of the film and Zulueta’s own statements, it is argued that the filmmaker conceived of cinema not only as a means of representing time, but as a device capable of objectifying temporal experience through rhythm and montage. The study focuses on how Arrebato dramatizes the tension between subjective temporal experience and objective duration through the quest of its protagonist, Pedro, to capture what he calls “rapture.” The article demonstrates how Pedro’s ascetic practice of maintaining a state of perpetual infancy represents an insufficient attempt to access pure duration, which can only be fully achieved through the mechanical objectification of time enabled by cinema. This analysis reveals how Zulueta develops an original theory of cinema as a medium capable of synthesizing subjective and objective temporalities through what the author calls “an asceticism of lived time”.

Keywords: Cinema, Philosophy | Duration | Experimentation | Rapture