Brazilian director Kleber Mendoza Jr. and his producer and co-director Juliano Dohenelis are representatives of the new generation of Latin American cinema. From the 2012 feature film debut "The Sound of the House" to "Aquarius" four years later, their eyes have been focused on the personal situation in modern civilization. The two directors have never stopped observing contemporary life. , And the accusation of those oppressors in gorgeous clothes. The faint restlessness and anxiety under the surface calm in "Sound of the House", the stubbornness of the "nail house" in "Aquarius", the glib tongue and unscrupulous means of real estate developers are all psychologically vivid descriptions of today's society. Although these films are based on realism and focus on the living conditions of the middle class in a corner of the city, they are not obsessed with plots or specific events, but try to capture the pulse of the times in patient characterization. There are often some "surreal" or "magical" elements in the movie, such as the sound that cannot be captured from the source in "The Sound of the House", the sudden brake on the street corner in the dark, and the dirty upstairs of Clara in "Aquarius" Qunhuan, rotten wood covered with moths and so on. These wild images, and the shocking moments that often shake off inadvertently, seem to have become the unique film language of Mendoza and Dohenelis (hereinafter referred to as Mendoza).
At first glance, "Baclaw" seems to be obviously different in form from the previous two works, but its spiritual core is very consistent. Moving the situation from the coastal city of Recife to a more remote and isolated village named Bakrau, which is also in the northeastern part of Brazil, the two directors continued their exploration of "where modernization takes people". In the first two works, the landlord and the real estate developer are the common protagonists. They are the co-conspirators and executors in the process of urban modernization. They not only control capital, but also control the taking and taking of ordinary people in a sense. The supreme power. If the images of such predators in "Sound of the House" and "Aquarius" are relatively mild, they are rich in education and familiar with the "rules of the game" of modern people, but "Baclaw", which moved from the city to the country It shows us their ferocious, savage, indifferent, and more primitive (or, conversely, more futuristic) side.
The opening of the film at the funeral indicates that the following story will always be associated with death. At the same time, the meticulous record of the funeral also reflects the traditional customs and the significance of the community bond to Bakrau. We have seen all kinds of people in this description. Their image is not only in terms of identity (teachers, doctors, vendors, prostitutes, street singers, etc.), but also in the face of the death of the beloved elders. Different attitudes displayed during a disaster event. Reason, impulse, sorrow, and some kind of philosophical mingling buried in the sound of music are intertwined, exuding a kind of mortal power that lives toward death. In the face of later greater disasters, these characters and emotional gestures explained at the beginning of the film have further evolved into more organized and powerful resistance actions. This way of laying out and "accumulating power" is similar to the director's previous works (especially It is "Aquarius") is actually in the same line. More importantly, from this moment on, the film has also penetrated bit by bit into the hidden contradictions and uneasiness in the seemingly prosperous depiction of rural scenery. At first, it was impossible to perceive the deep meaning behind it. The dam lying in the middle of the valley, the coffin slabs that were run over by wheels on the side of the road, and the mysterious medicinal materials licked into the tip of the tongue, made people feel extremely uncomfortable. The dump truck dumped the books like unloading goods. Later, they were directly or indirectly related to them. The catastrophe of Bakrau is linked together.
The appearance of the two motorcyclists is a very exciting passage in this film. It accurately connects the various anomalies that have been stuffed in the previous article from the plot, and the mystery is revealed later. Ingeniously, the identities of these two Brazilian natives (but obviously not from the northeast) are right between the Western "aggressors" and the local "exploited". Their actions, motives and endings are also the most provocative. Thoughtful. Compared with the relatively loose "Sound of the House" and "Aquarius" based on character sketches, the biggest turning point in the creation of "Baclaw" is to greatly strengthen the reference to the character's image and his identity. The symbolic meaning of is extremely strong. If the identity of the previous work is still limited to the differences and potential conflicts between different classes and different regions, this film will not be timid to raise it to the level of the country. The guardians of the village, the foreign invaders, and the self-knowing and unknowing co-conspirators in the village, the interaction between them is very much like the political economy between countries, and even between civilizations. Ecology. The various ruthless, indifferent and cruel images we see on the screen are actually happening all the time in the real world outside the movie theater. In this film, the director uses a very stylized description of violence to guide us to pay attention to those "Baclaws" and "American tourists" in reality. Moreover, this kind of orientation is not limited to, or is not related to the real Physical and physical violence, and it actually landed on political bullying, economic plunder, ideology and the trend of speech, these deeper, more sustained and more invisible violence. I believe that every audience who is sensitive to today's "social mood" can appreciate the director's intention from this fable. On the surface, the film is very action, direct, and typographical, but in fact it is Mendoza's most sharp and thorough work to date. Behind the typified shell of "Baclaw" hides very "Brazil" and localized things.
I really appreciate the "forward-looking" and forward-looking nature of this film when discussing the above issues. Among the directors who attend this year’s New York Film Festival who like to pay attention to political and social issues, Bo Lan Boyu likes to “look backwards”. His stories and Romania in the mirror are always shrouded in “the ghost of history”; Nada from Israel Lapid prefers to pay attention to the present. "Synonyms" is undoubtedly an extremely pioneering and fierce resistance to the current immigration plight; Mendoza's movies have actually been transparent since the first "Sound of the House". Out of the direction of attention and worries that are very futuristic. He used the story in Brazil to tell us that even in the land of a thriving, energetic and hopeful developing country (and a big country), under the surface peace, order, and national peace, there is a deep crisis. The beginning of "Baclaw" tells us that this story is "a few years later", and the sci-fi elements that flash from time to time in the film also make us believe it, but what is even more frightening is the film's ideological level of future humans (especially the perpetrators). Prophecy. That deep-rooted contempt for the "inferior group", self-satisfied superiority, unknowingly prejudices and chills of all kinds of unwarranted evils, may one day really come, or it may be happening at this moment. . From this point of view, "Baclaw" once again confirmed Mendoza's keen observation of the pulse of the times and its potential direction. This thinking is full of vitality, not dependent on the world, but also sober and heavy.
An interesting Q&A detail after the screening was that an old American grandpa asked gently and politely why the bad guys in the film were set to be Americans. Mendoza replied without hesitation, "Otherwise, where else can you be if you are not an American? What about people?" At that moment, I paradoxically felt that everything that happened in the movie seemed to extend into the real world very naturally. The various explicit and implicit bright and dark disputes and confrontations under Mendoza's lens, the inconsistency, prejudice and ignorance, may be really not far away from us.
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