Brazil – Podcasting Them Softly

Motion pictures don’t get much more uniquely eclectic and spellbinding than Bacurau, an ingenious genre tapestry of angry social commentary on capitalism and foreign relations, balls out gory splatter-fest genre flick in the midnite madness tradition, sun soaked modern western, anthropological oddity and overall mesmerizing curio sewn together from various different creative elements that are purposefully rough around the edges in their melding, which is one of the many charms to be found here. Somewhere in the back end of Brazil is Bacurau, a tiny village with a population that couldn’t be over one hundred, mourning the loss of its shamanistic matriarch as her daughter (Bárbara Colen) arrives back in town after long absence, just in time for a hypnotic funeral that sets the film’s first tonal resonance of many to come. The town has a host of interesting characters including protective ex-hitman Pacote (Thomas Aquino), charismatic feral warlord Lunga (drag artist Silvero Pereira is so great he deserves his own spinoff film) and fierce, no nonsense local physician Domingas, played by the great Sônia Braga. For the first act it feels like this will be a quaint, illuminating portrait of life in a part of the world we don’t normally get to see, a place where life is very different from what we’re used to in the west. The townsfolk struggle with their corrupt mayor who abuses his power by whoring out a young girl amongst them and withholding water supply under murky pretences. Then we shift gears into demented twilight zone mode and if there’s anything in your film to signal midway through that things are about to get very, very weird it’s the arrival of beloved cult film star Udo Kier as mysterious hunting guru Michael, who leads a troupe of despicable psychopaths into the region as the town suspiciously disappears off of Google maps, literal UFO’s observe from above and all hell breaks spectacularly loose. I don’t want to spoil too much because this is a film to savour, to unwrap and deliciously have the rug pulled out from under you at every turn of your expectations. It’s a brilliant social commentary on the dynamics of racism, corruption and the notion that foreign influence shows up to do basically anything it wants to perpetuate violence, corruption and hatred as long as there’s enough money involved. Kier hasn’t had a role this juicy in years, usually when you see his name in the billing as ‘special appearance’ you can bank on seeing him for two minutes in a throwaway cameo. Directors Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho know better and give him an extensive, scenery chewing monstrosity of a character that is his best work in a while. This film is hard to pin down and categorize, not necessarily because of its high ambitions but because of how audaciously and unapologetically it expects the viewer to keep up with them. There’s buckets of gruesome gore, deft social satire, genuine heartfelt emotion in areas and true artistic inspiration put into the finest of details in the way of life this village has, left like Easter eggs for the keenest of viewers to find and treasure. Bacurau is a truly special experience and one of my favourite films in a long time and the literal example of a ‘must-see’ for anyone who enjoys cinema, especially the wild and weird corners of the medium where gems like this reside.

-Nate Hill

As a huge Terry Gilliam fan I’m embarrassed to say that I only saw his most celebrated film, Brazil, for the first time a few nights ago. I guess with some filmmakers we just unconsciously save the best for last in their canon? Anyways, thoughts: There are two visual aesthetics here that struck me, existing in a cacophonous plane of many sights, sounds, colours and spectacle. On the one hand you have the angular, grey, needlessly cluttered and perpetually chaotic business style world of the future, packed with asinine bureaucratic incident, excessive consumerism and, uh, a whole fucking shit load of ducts, snaking hither and thither to seemingly represent the kind of mental fog and psychological stress that living in a city choking on its own infrastructure might afflict one with. That is is the world for Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), a put-upon peon of big business stuck in en endless, mad-dash hamster wheel of empty procedural diarrhea.

But there is another world for Sam, and another aesthetic for the film too. It shows up in periodic dream sequences and couldn’t be more different than his waking existence. Here he is free amongst an endless sea of clouds that promise freedom, gifted with Da Vinci esque winged contraptions and left to soar around the blessed blue. Here a beautiful goddess (Kim Griest) beams out at him from a veil of heavenly gauze like the Venus De Milo or any number of girls from a Renaissance painting. Unfortunately this dream world is just that: a phantasmic apparition not of his waking life, until he begins to see the girl from that realm in the real world, driving a hilariously oversized big rig truck no less.

It’s at that point that Sam’s world begins to get dangerous for him, the blurring of lines between fantasy and reality as well as this good natured desire to rectify the world’s most cataclysmic clerical error (that damn fly), seeing him go from mild mannered cog in the machine proverbial fly in the ointment, the stick which unknowingly lodges itself in the gears of the system and causes a hysterical meltdown. Along the way he meets many others including an opportunist colleague (Gilliam regular Michael Palin), his plastic surgery addicted mommy (Katherine Helmond), a shady corporate maintenance man (Bob Hoskins, looking more like Super Mario here than he did in the *actual* Super Mario film), his hyper anxious supervisor (Ian Holm) and a renegade duct repairman played by Robert DeNiro in a sly turn of antiestablishment derring do. So, overall? Folks are right for dubbing this Gilliam’s masterpiece, and while my heart will always call his 12 Monkeys my personal favourite, I just can’t argue that this isn’t his best film overall. It’s a sprawling canvas of ideas, nightmarish imagery, hope for escape that keeps getting quashed and reignited with each narrative beat, rib jabbing dark humour that calls Python to mind, jaw dropping production design and the kind of story that draws you right into this topsy-turvy realm. Sam exists in two worlds, as does the film, and the haunting fun is in seeing them crash, collide and each vie for presidency over one soul. Absolutely brilliant film.

-Nate Hill