Bacurau |
Brazil / France • 2019 • 131m •
  • Directed by: Juliano Dornelles, Kleber Mendonça Filho. • Starring: Barbara Colen, Thomas Aquino, Silvero Pereira, Thardelly Lima, Rubens Santos, Wilson Rabelo, Carlos Francisco, Luciana Souza, Karine Teles, Antonio Saboia, Sônia Braga, Udo Kier, Buda Lira. • Music by: Mateus Alves, Tomaz Alves Souza.      A filmmaker decides to travel to a village in the interior of Brazil to make a documentary. As days go by, he begins to discover that the locals are not exactly what they appear to be and hide dangerous secrets.
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Review:
I realized while watching the movie, that what I had set as the expectation for this film was not even close to what this film actually is. It is a genre blurring drama which plays like a western, flirts with dystopian sci-fi with a sprinkle of pure pulp mixed with some unclassifiable genre which someone has aptly termed as "Psychedelic Realism". The movie is laden with so symbolism and metaphors and there's no clever detective to put together the pieces for you; you have to that yourself. There's no oblivious narrative blueprint to follow and no precious little exposition to uncover. Instead there are beauties, mysteries and multiple characters with their own backstories from the community of Bacurau. This is one of those movies giving whom a second or a third watch will reward with the hidden images and clues to decipher its actual meaning.
Like 'Parasite', 'Bacurau' is the second marvelous non-English film this year picking up similar issues of 'social-inequality'. However, while Parasite focused more on the capitalist and income inequality aspects, Bacurau does this in the form of politics, colonialism and corruption. Both movies having a different style, narrative and themes but bringing up such powerful references about the different inequalities that exist in our world through metaphors.
Overall, Bacurau's narrative can be said to be divided into 3 main parts, all with a different genre and theme. But the transition between these parts is so smooth that you don't really notice that you've crossed them, making the film a seamless Psychedelic experience.
The movie has an enigmatic opener, a variant on those puzzles that begin with a body sprawled on the floor. Teresa (Bárbara Colen) is returning back to her village, Bacurau, for the funeral of her grandmother and the town's matriarch, the 94 year old Carmelita. As she participates in the funeral procession with her father and almost the entire town, we are immediately shown introduced to the main character of the film. It's not any one person. It's all of them. It's the community of Bacurau, and they are the people who's home is this quaint little town in the middle of Brazil's North-East region. From the song they sing at the funeral to the waving of their handkerchiefs, the main character is introduced rather pompously with music and life and death and energy. People live here, people face their challenges, and people die, but they do it all peacefully. As is communicated clearly in the beginning by the sign board welcoming visitors to the town, 'Bacurau - If you go, go in peace'.
Never have I seen such a peaceful demonstration of death and funeral captured on film the way it is done in the beginning of this movie. There is a death, but there's neither sadness nor mourning; only peaceful acceptance. Evident from the fact that the next day when Teressa meets and suggests of sleeping together to her romantic partner Pacote (Thomas Aquino) who might have been a reformed insurgent, Pacote makes sure by asking her, "Aren't you in mourning?", to which she replies, "I'm not religious". Teresa doesn't really need to mourn, because she is at home, amongst her people. Even with her grandmother gone, there is still peace.
Bacurau, as suggested by the name, is the main character in this movie. Based on some of Brazil's back country regions called sertao and more specifically, a quilombo, one of the may settlements originally founded by escaped enslaved people. The directors created a new version of this settlement, which we can call a 'remixed quilombo' - a black community in historical place of resistance with white, trans, indigenous and other inhabitants. The first part of the movie is just that, introducing this community to the audience and building its character through stunning, short visuals of the daily life of its people.
Right from the beginning, the film picks you up from the comfort of your homes and makes you travel through the arid green landscapes of North-East Brazil, and drops you in the middle of the town of Bacurau without any evident story. It then, starts nosing around its streets and secrets, jumping from one character to another, giving us some background about the entire community and the town. The directors show the town filtered with faces that have life in them. Even though they don't speak much, but even a distant voyeuristic journey into their lives gives us a deep character study of the town and their community that deepens the realism of the story. Right from the beginning it makes us feel at home, like we're a part of this community of Bacurau and helps us relate with them.
One of my favorite scenes conveying this is the water scene where a (presumed to be) pimp brings a lorry full of water, connects it to their house's plumbing, and three people use the water together, one for bathing, one washing clothes, and one cleaning dishes, as a more affluent lady observes them. Not a single word is said. This is a routine that shouldn't be a routine for anyone, making you instantly feel the shortage of water. The movie sets some facts straight in the beginning forts half, that this movie is about the town, and that there is a water shortage in the town due to a dam being built by the government, which has cut off this town's regular water supply and that the town is set in a dystopian futuristic world that looks a lot like our own present one.
The second part is where things start taking a mysterious, psychedelic, sci-fi turn. It feels like the first pill Teresa was shown taking when she entered the village, as fed to her by one of the older people from the town, has finally hit us, and now trippy weird things are beginning to show up as its effects. The town is no longer visible on the satellite maps, there are horses running through the town, a flying saucer is spotted following some people, mysterious deaths happening and many more weird things. Something has started to meddle with the town, and its troubling the people, the community. They can't interconnect these small things without realizing something big is coming.
We are also introduced to some kind of group of foreigners that get pleasure out of hunting people. For them it's a game, constituting of white Americans and Europeans who are there to get the highest score, a point for each kill, led by a "German living in America since the last 40 years" named Michael (Udo Kier). He seems harsh and ruthless and more of a crazy psychotic killer. I saw this as a reference to how America affects the world, and even a commentary on colonialism. Colonialism isn't a strong enough word to describe what the Europeans did to Latin America, and even rest of the world. I also saw it as a metaphor to how big American companies are entering Brazil and use the help of the local city dwelling, more Americanized and fairer-skinned Brazilians, only to trick them and kill them off, ultimately affecting the life of the peaceful rural communities of Brazil.
Such is the dystopian sci-fi-ness in this part that we are even introduced to a character named Lunga (Silvero Pereira), who dresses in Mad Max style clothes with a leopard-print cut-sleeves and a mullet, who helps uniting the town to fight against its oppressors. This is where the rage among the community of Bacurau begins to grow and show. We see the rage that was already there, from the lack of water and proper living qualities and from the corruption and oppression by the government. This rage is now increasing a thousand fold as it turns into madness. Mad from loss, mad at the failed government, mad at the brutality brought by the well-healed outsiders. This rage and madness in them can only be quenched by blood and revenge.
In one of the most thrilling, heart chilling scenes, we see the a group of children playing together and one of them shot by one of the heart. It is a heart wrenching, depressive scene, shot so well with such mystery and suspense, that its easy for anyone to lose in humanity. Human beings are savage, depraved animals who enjoy killing and inflicting pain and suffering upon one another. This powerful scene, in a way expresses how we as humans, know of all the injustices happening to fellow people around us, know of their sufferings but still choose to put a blind eye to them, just so we can live our happy lives. There are places around the world where we know young kids are being killed or tortured and dragged to wars, and even though we hear about it and sympathize for them, there nothing we or anyone else can do but to ignore it and live our own lives. This scene particularly shows this brutality and the suffering visually, making us re-think the entire existence of humanity and our purpose. The people of Bacurau are deeply disturbed and they will take their revenge, but not everyone is able to, and that it is the hardest part to digest.
And this is where the final part of the films comes where the narrative makes another sharp turn and becomes pure pulp. The action sequences are something a Tarantino living in Brazil would shoot. Not wanting to give out too many spoilers, but one of the main scenes of the movie involving a naked old black man in a greenhouse and two white hunters coming to kill him reminded me so much of a Quentin Tarantino movie. There is a slow build up, a suspense, an brutal and surprise attack and revenge for blood with all the blood, gore and nudity...
Review by criti-cally from the Internet Movie Database.
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