Directed By: Walter Salles
Written By: Walter Salles, João Emanuel Carneiro, Marcos Bernstein
Starring: Fernanda Montenegro as Dora, Vinícius de Oliveira as Josué, Maríllia Pêra as Irene
Walter Salles is a writer-director with spectacular talent. Central do Brasil, his international breakout film, is subtle, honest and effortlessly poignant. Once it roars into its road movie gear, every scene is just brimming with raw, unadulterated emotion. It’s an incredibly personal film, and often it is so personal that we want to look away because we feel like we’re trespassing, uninvited and undeserved, into the lives of very real people. Fernando Meirelles’ Cidade de Deus has often been hailed as the quintessential Brazilian film; but after watching this film, I really can’t see why anymore. I mean, to be perfectly fair, that film is much more stylistically absorbing, and it frequently dissolves into a dizzyingly powerful whirl of colour and energy, but its characters never becomemorethan just characters in Rocket’s (the main protagonist) story. Here, Salles creates characters that are so flawed, and so human, that they almost immediately become the very real embodiment of working-class Brazil.
And while the script should have been rewarded with at least an Oscar nod for Best Original Screenplay for unpretentiously and naturally exposing the various flaws of each character with preternatural sensitivity, what really makes this movie work are the two lead actors. Obviously, Montenegro’s creation of Dora is the most powerful aspects of this movie. She is hypocritical, damaged, unloved, needy, selfish and self-pitying, but somehow also tender and warm. We start out hating her, but end up sympathizing with her. And the best part is, unlike other road dramas that always seem to deliberately mark the progress of a character’s growth with big gestures and dramatic declarations, Dora’s growth is almost imperceptible. She changes so naturally, and so subtly, that we end up wondering when she ever started to change at all, or if we had just been blinded all along by baseless judgment. It’s an incredible performance, especially because Montenegro understands that Dora isn’t a flawed woman who becomes a saint after meeting a young orphan, but a flawed woman who simply becomes aware of her flaws. Josué isn’t a person who directly changes her; he simply reflects the implications of her actions. Before meeting him, she had no one to answer to, no one to hurt, and thus no one to teach her that her actions are killing herself. Josué, more than anything else, is her unadulterated childhood alter ego. By understanding that he can be saved from his father’s fate, she too understands that she doesn’t have to be forever tormented by her loveless life. By accepting and loving him, she is accepting and loving herself. This relationship is important because it helps us understand the significance of the ending. That said, de Oliveira deserves an Oscar nod for his naturalistic portrayal of a stubborn, mistrustful, and sensitive orphan in denial of his orphaned state. He acts like an adult, and talks constantly of sex and naked women, but only because he is trying to convince himself that he doesn’t need a family. He is unwilling to accept other people’s help because of this overwrought, twisted sense of pride, but he also really, really wants someone to help him, if only not to be alone. It’s a very delicate balance, and de Oliveira is astonishingly spot-on. It doesn’t hurt that he’s really, really, really adorable. In other news, he’s all grown up now:
The point is, though, um...he's a good actor.
Religion, a recurring motif in this film, is explored in impressive detail. When the film first begins, Josué’s mother comically addresses a spectacularly angry letter to Jesus, then changes her mind and says something along the lines of “I’ve been too harsh on Jesus”. Because religion is something so deliberately prominent in the film, I’m assuming that this is a beautiful slice of self-knowing dramatic irony, in which Salles is calling into question man’s (or Salles’) faith in God. He is challenging the audience to think about how we can have faith in God when we subject something as sacred as faith to our arbitrary mood swings and indecisiveness. But Salles isn’t exactly an evangelist either. In fact, deliberately makes an evangelist truck driver drink a glass of beer, and in one gulp, suggesting that religion is repressive and artificial, like a misshapen veneer pressed firmly onto our desires. Salles also purposely names Josué’s father ‘Jesus’. As in Jesus of Nazareth Jesus. As in God’s son but God himself but dead but reincarnated but alive and well and in heaven Jesus. Okay. So if the character Jesus represents God, his absence suggests God’s absence. Then again, the film’s view of religion isn’t that simplistic. This film isn’t just a plea for atheist solidarity. Salles is too smart for that. He obviously has an incredibly tumultuous relationship with God, and negotiates this relationship through the movie. It is in a cult-like temple, for instance, that Dora and Josué realize that they care for each other. Biblical imagery is also purposely used to draw a parallel between Dora/Josué and Mary/Jesus, which also firmly cements Central do Brasil as a film equally about religious awakening as it is about self-awakening. At the end of the film, Dora tells Josué that “You’re right. Your father will come back”, because she (and perhaps Salles) realizes that God was never absent. And that she just had to see past her own pettiness and self-absorbedness to realize that. I think Salles here is invoking Nietzsche (although, probably not deliberately haha). Nietzsche famously said “Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you”, and Salles too believes that there is a God, but that we shouldn’t believe that solely on blind faith. We must realize it, and realize it in our own time. This is astounding depth to be covered in a film fundamentally about a relationship between two people. It’s insane how Salles casually and simultaneously explores two huge things at once.
The cinematography in the first half of the film is particularly interesting, because it constantly uses interesting framing techniques to limit our scope of vision. This, of course, is a visual accompaniment to the front half’s indecisiveness towards faith, and highlights the problem of human subjectivity. It is also important to know that Salles uses metal and concrete and other man-made materials to frame the camera, suggesting that perhaps urbanity is stifling our sense of self-awareness. Towards the end, the landscapes are expansive and the scenes are unframed, paralleling Dora’s self-awakening. Salles obviously has taken his time to think this through, and the results are brilliant. He uses a blue tint when capturing Central do Brasil (no italics because I’m referring to the actual train station), which emphasizes its monotony and dreariness. He then uses a sepia tone to capture the landscapes of rural Brazil to emphasize its freedom from urban routine and its beauty. It’s very calculated, but he never rubs it in your face like Tim Burton or Darren Aronofsky. He knows what he wants to convey, he conveys it, and leaves it at that. If you notice it, good for you. If you don’t, too bad. No catering to the masses. He considers these details but is not particularly concerned about you noticing them. That’s badass.
The main reason why I think this should be the quintessential Brazilian film is because it documents the hopes and flaws of real people and turns it into poetry. The scene in the middle of the film that adopts a documentary-style jump cut-filled montage of different people narrating their letters to Dora is particularly wonderful and moving. Normally, this is the kind of sequence that you see in corny Benetton ads, but here Salles uses his poetic power and makes his characters reference specific, singular details that immediately make them believable and human. It’s astonishing how much he can do with just one fucking line. And sometimes less than that.
What’s also utterly impressive is how Salles has the sensitivity to make Josué’s parents omnipresent figures, even though his mother appears for a grand total of 4 minutes and his father never appears at all. Too often I find myself complaining about how important absent figures don’t feature prominently enough in the main film (RE: Les petits mouchoirs). If something is important, then show that it’s important. It’s really quite simple. If this film were to be made with the same plot, same actors, same director but with a slightly altered script that erased all references to Josué’s parents after his mom dies, it would hardly be half as brilliant as it is now. There are so many casual references to Josué’s parents, and to Dora’s father for that matter, and these references are inarguably what makes this film so moving. They help us realize that these are people damaged and sad because of their absent parents, and that are trying desperately to cope with being alone. It adds a whole new dimension to their relationship, which in turn grounds the film. Returning to the point, anybody can make a film with omnipresent absent characters if they wanted to. But Salles does so with such subtlety and with such sensitivity that he automatically establishes a league of his own.
A lot of people didn’t like the ending for its ‘predictability’, but that’s where they misunderstand the film. The main reason why people think it predictable is because they think that Dora never changes, succumbs to her flaws, and thus leaves Josué behind again. But it is precisely because she has changed that she leaves him behind. As mentioned earlier, he represents her childhood. Except he could possibly have a chance at a normal, happy family — something that she never had. In leaving him behind, she is giving herself another opportunity at building herself up again; in leaving him behind, she is accepting the possibility for change — which is something that Salles makes abundantly clear when he makes her put on a new dress and lipstick; in leaving him behind, she is also accepting that Jesus could possibly come back, and thus accepting that not all fathers are like hers. In not generalizing, she is also liberating herself from a life of perpetual disappointment, because she realizes that her life doesn’t have to be disappointing simply because she has only known disappointing lives. When viewed in this way, the ending is necessary.
Admittedly, I don’t really get the occasional fade-to-black transitions, because it makes the film look episodic — which is one of the biggest dangers for road films. I would’ve liked it better if the ending was less dramatic. I also would’ve liked it if the music was less dramatic, or if there was just lesser music in general. But this film is too well-made for me to be hung up on small details. It contains one of the most brilliantly written screenplays ever, and Salles’ direction is preternaturally intelligent. Also, Pedro Almodovar is immensely overrated.
KevinScale Rating: 4.5/5
therein, Therin. 