La Bola Negra review: Spanish gay drama is one of the best movies of the year

In Spanish.Running time: 159 minutes.

Rated R (violence/bloody images, graphic nudity, sexual content and language).In theaters.

On Netflix Dec.2.La bola negra, or the blackball, is an old-school method of social rejection. As in: White ball means yes; Blackball means no.One of its funniest hours was on a 1999 episode of “Frasier.” “Blackball!”, the Crane brothers gleefully yelled to veto each other’s choices as they put together a dinner party guest list. But the sprawling and deeply moving Spanish film “La Bola Negra,” which recently won the all-important People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival and the top prize at the Hamptons International Film Festival, should be enthusiastically embraced, not coldly shoved aside.A profound World War II-era gay drama — though not at all what you’d expect from that brief description — it’s one of the best movies of the year. Directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, collaborators who go by the fun nickname “Los Javis,” the modestly budgeted film is reminiscent of “The Brutalist” in how it achieves surprising and tactile period visual majesty with pennies.

Fifteen-million-dollar “La Bola” looks a lot better than films that were 20 times more costly to make.It’s hard to shake the haunting image of dust-covered man scaling the rubble of a pile of museum statues, or celebratory fireworks on a beach as a young fighter’s conscience is privately tortured.There’s a surreal snow-covered mountain straight out of Narnia and a paralyzing scene involving a hand and torso that’s as tragically romantic as it gets.

This truly is filmmaking at its most beautiful and awe-inspiring. And narratively complex.A detailed puzzle, “La Bola” bounces back and forth between different years: 1932, 1937 during the Spanish Civil War and then a giant leap to 2017.

Some will be frustrated that the relationship between the trio of threads is not immediately made clear.But give...