253. Brazilian director Kleber Mendonca Filho’s debut feature film “O Soma o Redor” (Neighboring Sounds) (2012) in Portuguese, based on his original script: A lovely, innovative example of effective, judicious and discreet use of sound in film-making that complements the mood of the screenplay

Film directors often make amazing debut feature films. These debut films can be awesome if they are based on the director’s original scripts rather than an adapted one. Kleber Mendonca Filho’s debut feature film Neighboring Sounds as a director stands out as he has observed and reflected on the history of Brazil and created a tale that mirrors the race conflicts and the closely related economic and social disparity that has existed in recent decades of that wonderful, naturally well-endowed nation’s history.

Beyond the interesting tale that director Filho wrote for his debut as a feature filmmaker, he evidently decided to build his tale aided by the importance of sounds in a film that most viewers neglect to notice. It is no coincidence that he chose to title the film as Neighboring Sounds. If a viewer approaches the film casually, the story of the film will be more overpowering than the diegetic sounds captured on the film’s soundtrack. Filho divides his film into three chapters (i) Guard Dogs, (ii) Night Guard, and (iii) Body Guards. The common phrase for all three is “guard.” At the end of the film, a perceptive viewer will mull over the emerging necessity of guards for certain sections of Brazilian society.

A view from an empty apartment in the condominium,
 where a past resident committed suicide

A swimming pool would make way for another upscale
apartment as the demand increases.

The film opens with the camera capturing historical sepia images of dark skinned workers of a plantation in Brazil with a huge imposing mansion in the background. The film then brings us back in full color to the modern-day crowded urban Brazil where fair-skinned Brazilians live in varied levels of upper middle-class comfort, with household help, dogs to guard some households and limited common areas with high walls for children to play and recreate with protection. Some of the inhabitants in the condominium and the locality are very rich, some are comparatively less affluent. In an early sequence of the feature film the viewer is introduced to calm locality in the city of Recife, where the calm exterior is shattered visually and aurally by a car suddenly speeding into view, hitting another car. That is the first taste that Filho gives the viewer that all is not well as it appears. A questioning viewer would wonder what that initial sequence was all about—but it would make sense as you absorb various such later incidents that dot the film.  Most of the inhabitants are rich enough to employ maids and an old security guard that some inhabitants are not satisfied with and want replaced. Perhaps that is why one family in the condominium has a dog and the dog’s barking is a nuisance for another inhabitant who tries to kill the dog for the sake of a quiet night. One gets the impression that there is no crime in the area, only to realize that vehicles parked overnight are targets for thieves who find a market for stolen car music systems. 

Some residents of the apartments are not as rich as others;
the lady above is a single mother of two kids, irritated by a
neighbor's dog barking at night and gets her kids to massage her 

In the very first chapter, Filho’s script introduces the fact there is a very rich family with many close relatives residing in the neighborhood and even the old guard is a trusted man of this rich family’s current patriarch and therefore retained as a guard. Whether he is effective in his work or not, can be indirectly associated with the theft of a car music system. Filho’s film never spoon feeds the viewer. The viewer has to appreciate the mosaic of seemingly unrelated details to appreciate what the tale leads up to. The method employed by Filho brings to mind Lars von Trier’s amazing revenge tragedy Dogville (which also had a dog on the fringes of its tale), another remarkable film where the characters could be extrapolated beyond the limited geographical area presented that film to an entire country. Filho’s urban pocket of Recife (Brazil’s sixth largest city) is an encapsulated world of Brazil today that appears calm but is full of seething anger towards exploiters, past and present.  

In the second chapter, when “professional” guards seem to have replaced the old guard and the barking dog, the viewer is introduced to images and sounds of less privileged kids seeming to attack the well-to-do neighborhood residents using the cover of trees and terraces at night. Was that the reason for the guard dog to bark in the night? Filho’s film first suggests the sounds and visuals of these kids scurrying on tree-tops  and roofs in the night as a dream of some residents, until the so-called new guards on duty catch hold of one of the kids hiding on a tree, only to let him go with a warning. The attitude of the guards towards the waif provides an interesting and unusual way to project the later events in the film that the viewer does not anticipate. 

At day time, Filho introduces a sexual escapade between a guard and a maid in an apartment when the owner has stepped out and alerted the guard of his brief absence merely to guard the apartment. Filho surprises the viewer with a shot of a kid hurriedly departing from the supposedly empty apartment through the open doorway. The kid was evidently disturbed by the sounds of the activity of the guard and the maid who has never been inside that particular apartment. 

Sounds matter in varied and surprising ways, in Neighboring Sounds, often contrasting the silence that reveal an important detail. Who was the kid? How come the guard was not aware that the empty house had a silent occupant? As the film progresses, those details make sense in the larger canvas offered by the film. In another sequence, the viewer glimpses the elderly don of the complex walking alone in the quiet night, evidently for a swim in the ocean, going past signs warning people of the sharks in the water. The guards watch their new employer with interest going for the swim alone and returning safely. All is calm but the uneasy calm grows on the viewer.

A new guard offers professional protection to residents,
who have experienced small crimes in the neighborhood

The night guards are recruited and on the job

Filho briefly takes the viewer and some of his characters away from Recife to the more interior areas of Brazil where the elderly don, his son, and the son’s girlfriend go for a swim near a waterfall and Filho gives the fresh water drenching them to surrealistically turn to the symbolic color of blood. Filho keeps the viewer guessing. the location of the waterfall is close to the large house shown in sepia color at the start of the film  and a sugar plantation that the elderly patriarch's family owns.  And right up to the very end of the film, the film discusses and insinuates bloody events that had happened and are likely to take place, without ever showing them on screen. The bloody waterfall, which is not real, is the closest Filho comes to “violence” shown in the film. there is also a passing mention of a recent suicide by a past inhabitant of the Recife condominium. And yet the film suggests violence in a very discreet way! That is what makes Neighboring Sounds stand out among contemporary films. It presents the simmering anger that results from social inequality over decades, with the “guards” displaying similar intolerant behavior they have  experienced in the past from others. A single mother’s irritation towards barking dogs that is only alerting the denizens to dangers in the night is another subtext of the film offered by the screenplay.

The family patriarch (center) shares a meal with his son
and the likely future daughter-in-law

The three visit locations near the patriarch's sugar plantation,
and shower at a nearby waterfall

The water surrealistically turns to the color of blood 

Filho’s film Neighboring Sounds anticipates his co-directed Bacurau (2019). Neighboring Sounds offers more style and sophistication than the later work. The use of sound in Neighboring Sounds does not predict events as most films tend to do—the lack of sound and the abrupt use of sound to aid the script are unusual and remarkable. In some ways, the film  reminds you of the end sequence of Steven Spielberg’s debut film Duel (1971), in which a menacing truck falls off a cliff with a loud metallic groan, as though the inanimate truck had a life of its own. Filho is talented and this Brazilian film is a lot more sophisticated than Bacurau—the latter film having more mass appeal of a modern Western, while the former is more subtle in its message and linkages of disparate events. 

Neighboring Sounds is an important film of the past decade, especially on the technical front, and is a treat for those who seek well made films. The film indirectly seems to ask if Brazilians today have learnt from the lessons of their history. The viewer can decide that.

P.S.  Neighboring Sounds (2012) and The Fever (2019) are two remarkable debut films from Brazil in the last decade. The two films might not boast of the wider appeal of Bacurau (2019) with its violence and some nudity. Quite evidently, Brazilian cinema is on the march long after the days of Cinema Nuovo, mostly in the 1950s up to the 1970s (Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil; Ruy Guerra’s The Guns; Leon Hirschzman’s The Girl from Ipanema; and Nelson Pereira dos Santos’ How Tasty was My Little Frenchman). The two films The Fever and Bacurau have been reviewed on this blog and both are among the author's Twenty Best Films of 2019. Neighboring Sounds has won 38 awards worldwide.

243. Brazilian directors Juliano Dornelles’ and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s film “Bacurau” (2019): Structurally similar to Hollywood films but refreshingly different in presenting a realistic canvas of Brazilian characters and contemporary problems of that wonderful, diverse country

The first impression of a viewer of Bacurau would be that it is structured in many ways similar to any recent Tarantino film or the way a traditional Hollywood Western is assembled: the bad guys making the life of the good people a living hell until the good people get external help to rid the bad guys while the audience experiences a cathartic orgy of violence and gore towards the end of the film, when the good people emerge victorious over the evil characters. 

Is Bacurau a film that offers much more than that? The Cannes film festival jury thought it was the second best film in competition, sharing the honour with Les Miserables (2019), a film that had little to do with Victor Hugo. Was Bacurau less impressive than the Korean film Parasite, a film that won the top honour at the Cannes festival in the same category, which also had a similar orgy of violence at its end? Debatable, indeed, because Parasite deals with economic disparity in urban life while Bacurau deals with much more: economics, politics, sociology, ecology, and even human hunting as a depraved sport for the rich.

Funeral procession for a dead matriarch.
(Coffins are constant reference points in the film.)

While Parasite is a clever reworking of Michael Haneke’s two film versions of Funny Games (1997, 2007) and Claude Chabrol’s  La ceremonie (1995), Bacurau presents a deeper sociological and economic canvas that is arguably more realistic and fascinating than the slick and glib Korean film, despite Bacurau’s ridiculous drone without helicopter blades or other conventional propulsion aids to make it fly.  The desolate town of Bacurau in Bacurau does not exist in reality. Yet Bacurau presents a very realistic future scenario where the rich and powerful can remove entire towns and villages from satellite images that can be accessed on the internet for a short time without the rest of the world noticing the difference.

Teresa (Barbara Colen) returns to Bacurau,
when her grandmother dies

Why did  the screenplay-writers call this fictional place Bacurau, which one learns is the Portuguese name of a bird—the night jar—found in southeast Brazil?  The nightjar is unique because of two rare factors—it can easily go into torpor, with reduced body temperature and metabolic rate, enabling it to survive periods of low food availability and it can naturally camouflage itself with tree branches and leaves for survival.  The allegory of the bird and the simple world of the fictional Bacurau’s population will be more apparent to those who have visited Brazil. In the film Bacurau, the town’s population battle the manmade decrease in water availability—in a country where some parts are blessed with the abundance of water from the mighty Amazon River.

Bacurau begins with visuals of a modest water truck that navigates ill maintained roads to a town that survives with a church, a school, a museum (where it records past denizens who revolted against injustice) , a whorehouse, a small hospital, a farm with horses and a diverse population that represents the varied races of human beings all living in harmony--a microcosm of Brazilian social reality today. Is the ecology sustainable without adequate drinking water? Can a remote town survive without adequate supply of food and medicines?

"Doctor" Domingas (Sonia Braga) with blood-splattered coat

The Brazilian co-directors (Filho had made the acclaimed recent film Aquarius with actress Sonia Braga, who also has a significant role in Bacurau) underscore the bias of Brazilian politicians who neglect fringe populations living in remote areas in preference to wealthier populations living in better endowed areas of the country to get re-elected.  They add to this scenario  the profile of the inconsiderate politicians who supply medicines that are either banned or beyond their expiry date and dump second hand books for the library transported in dumpsters all in the name of aid. Then there are politicians that divert canal water, protected by armed guards, which could have served the town of Bacurau that needed the water, to other projects that serve the politicians’ own narrow interests. When the local politician arrives with his gifts, the population of the town hide behind closed doors just as the nightjar bird is prone to hide by camouflaging itself.

Into this bleak scenario, co-directors Dornelles and Filho add another and more deadly and sinister element—the sport of rich individuals from Europe and USA to kill human beings in Bucarau and its surrounding areas targeting  those are not white (just as hunters used to kill wild animals) with the assent of local Brazilian politicians. Dornelles and Filho even add rich Brazilians (referred to in the credits as “Foresteiras”) who are in this group of bizarre, racist individuals who kill humans without remorse.  This group is led by a character named Michael (played by Udo Kier, who has worked with Lars von Trier in Breaking the Waves and Europa and has a cult following for his appearances in gory,  horror films). One would have expected actor Kier to have been stony faced at the Cannes premiere of Bacurau but according to IMdB trivia Kier cried for the first time in his 50 year career “because of the whole experience of filming (Bacurau)”

Domingas (Braga) offers Michael (Udo Kier)  soup

There are many details in Bacurau, which will ring a chord with Brazilian audiences as there are references to real life people in Brazilian history, people who fought against injustice n the past.  Bacurau brings back memories of great Brazilian filmmakers of the past who made films that are unforgettable such as Ruy Guerra (The Guns, 1964, winner of the Silver Bear at Berlin festival) and Glauber Rocha (Entranced Earth, 1967, winner of the Grand Prize at Locarno festival and FIPRESCI prize at Cannes festival). Bacurau might not boast of the high production qualities of Parasite, but it is a film that reminds you of the Brazilian films of Guerra and Rocha.

Michael (Kier),  the lead remorseless human hunter

Like the nightjar, the people of Bacurau prove that can “eat” human insects. And it offers more food for thought than a Tarantino film or a regular Western. 

(The film is showcased at the 2019 Denver Film Festival, USA, opening shortly, which has a major focus on Brazilian cinema.)

P.S.  Bacurau won the Best Film and the Best Director awards at the Lima Latin America Film Festival., the ARRI /OSRAM Award for the Best International Film at the Munich Film Festival, and the Best Director Award, the Carnet Cove Jury Award, and the Critics’ award  at the Sitges Catalonian International  Film Festival.  Lars  von Triers’s Breaking the Waves (with Udo Kier and mentioned in the above review) has been reviewed earlier on this blog (click on the name of the film in this postscript to access the review)  and is one of the author’s best 100 films. The author has visited Brazil and interacted with its senior government officials who were planning and managing national agricultural projects in the late Nineties. Bacurau is one of the author's best 20 films of 2019.

195. Colombian director Ciro Guerra’s “El abrazo de la serpiente” (Embrace of the Serpent) (2015) (Colombia/Argentina/Venezuela): An amazing film with deep insights on nature and civilization dedicated to “peoples whose song we will never know.”

Both posters above are predominantly in black and white,
while colour is utilized sparingly and effectively,
 as in the film

“The display I witnessed in those enchanted hours was such that I find it impossible to describe in a language that allows others to understand its beauty and splendour; all I know is that, like all those who have shed the thick veil that blinded them, when I came back to my senses, I had become another man.” ---German scientist and explorer Theodor Koch-Grunberg’s (1872-1924) writings, quoted at the opening of the film

The year 2015 witnessed the release of three outstanding films from South American countries: Land and Shade from Colombia, The Pearl Button from Chile, and Embrace of the Serpent a co-production from Colombia, Argentina and Venezuela. Each of the three films deals with history and economics. Each film present a combination of fact and fiction, the last two blending history with actors playing fictional roles that have some facts to rely on. Each of the films provide the viewer an unsettling perspective of reality that you rarely encounter in cinema these days. Each of these three is an artistic work that will satisfy a sensitive viewer who is looking for entertainment without sex, violence, and escapist action. All three films are bolstered by outstanding cinematography, direction, and incredibly mature performances by little known actors that can make big Hollywood names pale in comparison. And more importantly, these films have been made for a fraction of the cost of an average Hollywood film.

First journey: Koch-Grunberg (Bijvoet), Manduca, and young Karamakate,
with material possessions, including a phonograph

Embrace of the Serpent is a tale of two scientists/explorers: the German Theodor Koch-Grunberg (1872-1924) (played by Jan Bijvoet of Borgman) and the American Richard Evan Schultes (1915-2001) (played by Brionne Davis of Avenged). Both men were seeking a medicinal flower “yakruna” from a native shaman Karamakate (played by Nibio Torres, when young, and Antonio Bolivar, when old), who lives on the banks of the Amazon and its tributaries. 

There is a 20-30 year gap (1909 to 1940) between the two encounters of Karamakate and the two explorers from the developed world. Koch-Grunberg was an ethnographer who had fallen ill while studying the Pemon natives of Venezuela and is brought to the shaman Karamakate, who knows about yakruna and where it can be found. This flower Koch-Grunberg had been told could cure the sick explorer. Karamakate distrusts Koch-Grunberg and Manduca, Koch-Grunberg’s native companion and recently freed slave. Karamakate refuses money as he takes the German and Manduca to Colombia along the Amazon only to find Colombian soldiers misusing the plant as an hallucinatory drug and growing it in untraditional ways for profit and drug abuse. The drugged soldiers and the plants are destroyed by the enraged young Karamakate. Koch-Grunberg is thus not cured and dies even though he is sustained for a while by Karamakate blowing a hallucinogenic powder up his nostril. However, Koch-Grunberg’s detailed notes of his trip with young Karamakate and the yakruna that he saw before the plants were destroyed, survive his passing. 

Second journey: American Richrd Evan Schultes (Davis) and the older
Karamakate (Bolivar), reach where the last yakruna grows

Decades later, the American scientist Richard Evan Schultes, having read the detailed notes of Koch-Grunberg, locates Karamakate, now much older and possibly with memory fading (or at least affecting to fade) and less temperamental than in his youth. The American is also searching for yakruna for commercial reasons because the genetic resource of the flower’s seeds can apparently make rubber trees disease-free adding to the profits of the global rubber industry chain, from forests to factory. Old crafty Karmakate shows him the last yakruna flower and cleverly cooks it for Schultes. The outcome shown in Embrace of the Serpent is, to say the least, fascinating. 

What is the serpent in the title of the film? It is the Amazon. The Amazon does look like an anaconda when viewed from the sky. It appears as a massive snake that populates the Amazon banks and the director cleverly shows the birth of young anacondas early in the film. To add to the visual suggestion, there is a clever line in the script that states the natives believe the snake came from the skies. (This is not far removed from similar analogies within the traditional beliefs of natives of Chile in The Pearl Button.) 

Two aspects of this important film stand out for any viewer. The two native actors who play Karamakate overshadow the performances of professional western actors in this film. The credit not only goes to the native actors but to the script of director and co-scriptwriter Ciro Guerra, co-scriptwriter Jacques Toulemonde Vidal and the cinematographer David Gallego. One has to admit considerable fiction has been enmeshed with the two historical trips on the Amazon river separated in time by some three decades. 

The young impetuous Karamakate (Torres) with the Amazon behind him

The second aspect of the film is the deliberate choice of the director Ciro Guerra to make Embrace of the Serpent in black and white (cinematographer David Gallego) for most parts. [This deliberate choice needs to be compared with a few other important films on evil/distrust and reconciliation deliberately made in black and white with superb outcomes: Mike Nichol’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995) and Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon (2009)—all cinematic works with reflective depth and common concerns which would have had lesser impact were they made in lush colour.] It is possible that a colour version of the film Embrace of the Serpent would have emphasized the wrong elements of the tale—the formidable river and the overarching rain forests. The pivotal aspect of the film is the traditional world of the natives and their knowledge of traditional medicine orally handed over generations and kept protected from commercial misuse. When colour is used briefly by the filmmakers in Embrace of the Serpent, it is to communicate this wisdom. It is not surprising that several reviewers have noticed the parallels between Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Embrace of the Serpent. Science/scientific knowledge (here, specifically the commercial production of rare plants and genetic resources) and accumulated human wisdom are weighed against each other in both the cinematic works. Somewhere in the film Karamakate says, “Every tree, every flower brings wisdom.” The endings of both films, their release separated by half a century, will humble a reflective viewer. 

Embrace of the Serpent provides much food for thought. The journeys on the river have parallels with Homer’s tale of Ulysses voyage. In Ciro Guerra’s film, there are three major ports/stops during the river voyage. The first is a native village on the banks of the river. There is a peaceful exchange of knowledge and understanding of each other’s cultures. The natives listen to European classical music from a phonograph of Koch-Grunberg. Koch-Grunberg and Manduca dance to German music of Haydn and Handel and entertain the natives who end up stealing his compass. Koch-Grunberg is upset that his only scientific aid for navigation is lost. Karamakate sagaciously drills reason into the mind of the upset German, ironically reminding the scientist “Knowledge belongs to all. You do not understand that. You are just a white man.” Even the natives need to learn from the developed nations, the shaman appears to assert. Ironically, we learn in the film that shamans such as Karamakate were almost wiped out by the colonizers. One reason for Karamakate to agree taking Schultes on the second voyage on the river is to connect with those remnants of his tribe that had shamans. 

At the religious settlement, the trio treads with care 

The second stop is at a religious settlement run by fanatic Roman Catholic monks who brutally inculcate Christianity in the minds of innocent native kids obliterating any respect they had for traditional wisdom. The monks seem totally oblivious of the virtue of translating Christ’s pacifist teachings in real life. Karamakate, Koch-Grunberg and Manduca try to help free the native kids from the priests' influence. The freed native kids are ironically later found some 30 years later by Karamakate and Schulte as grown-up twisted Christians who have interpreted religion in a bizarre manner, taking to idolatry and cannibalism. The effect of Roman Catholic monks on the natives during the colonization period is dealt in a parallel manner in both Embrace of the Serpent and The Pearl Button. 

The final decision for the old Karamkate comes from his environment
and wisdom that he has acquired over time

The third stop in both voyages is where the yakruna flower grows. Karamakate’s reactions are different each time. It is important to note that yakruna is a plant that can heal, symbolic of the independence of the natives. And it grows on rubber trees! But commercial compulsions of the developed world always lead to loss of independence of the natives. A rubber slave pleads for death as the rubber sap pail he had nailed to a rubber tree has been emptied and he will have to face brutal consequences from his masters. It is therefore not surprising that Karamakate’s constant refrain to both explorers is to unburden themselves of their material possessions.

Embrace of the Serpent constantly pits personal material possessions against collective traditional memories. The old Karamakate says, “To become warriors, the cohiuanos must abandon all and go alone to the jungle, guided only by their dreams. In this journey, he has to find out, in solitude and silence, who he really is. He must become a wanderer and dream. Many are lost, and some never return. But those who return they are ready to face what is to come.“ The film is unusual in many respects. In the film nine languages are spoken including Spanish, Portuguese, German, Catalan, Latin and four aboriginal Amazonian languages. 

Secondly, women are almost peripheral in the film for reasons best known to the filmmkers alone.

Then, the film touches on the resources of the river itself—the fish. Karamakate specifically warns the scientist Koch-Grunberg not to fish during a particular period (possibly its breeding period to preserve its numbers) but the German does not listen and answers, “The river is full of fishes. We cannot possibly end them.” Today, oceans and rivers are rapidly losing the rich fish species and their diversity by mindless over-fishing.

Finally, there is the contrast of the messages in dreams presented in Embrace of the Serpent —the anaconda suggests that Karamakate kill the scientist Theo, the jaguar suggest the opposite. The two dreams distil the quandary of the film for the viewer—science vs human wisdom. The final action of old Karamakate before he disappears seems to reconcile the jaguar’s view and the shaman’s accumulated wisdom. The American explorer Schultes is cured of his insomnia, he can dream, and is now a changed human being. In a parallel Kubrick moment, he is at home with butterflies!

P.S. Embrace of the Serpent won the Golden Peacock at the 2015 Indian International Film Festival in Goa; the Art cinema award at the Cannes film festival; the Golden Apricot at the Yerevan film festival (Armenia); the Golden Astor at the Mar del Plata international film festival; and the Alfred P. Sloan prize at the Sundance film festival. The film is in myriad ways superior to the Hungarian film Son of Saul, which won the Best Foreign Film Oscar while Embrace of the Serpent lost to the Hungarian challenge after both were final nominees for the award. All three films Land and Shade (Colombia), The Pearl Button (Chile), and Embrace of the Serpent (all released in 2015) are on the author’s top 10 films list for that year and have been separately reviewed in detail on this blog. Another film Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) mentioned in the above review is also reviewed in detail earlier on this blog.

140. Uruguayan director Rodrigo Plá’s “La Demora” (The Delay) (2012): Meaningful and mature cinema that has universal relevance

An evocative poster of the film at the Berlin Film Festival

The conventional poster

Uruguay is not a country that one would easily associate with great cinema.  Even for Latin American standards, Uruguay cannot boast of major cinematic works.  And yet, Rodrigo Plá’s La demora (The Delay) offers without any doubt a major Uruguayan contemporary counterpoint to Michael Haneke’s Amour (Love), both films made in the same year, both major winners on the film festival circuit, both offering quality cinema that will grip the viewer right up to the end.

While Amour dealt with uxorial love, The Delay is all about paternal love. Both films deal with the problems of the elder citizens today. While Amour dealt with the problem within the economic comforts of a small Parisian apartment where the principal characters could afford hospitalization, home nurses, a baby grand piano, a good music system, and a concierge to buy groceries, The Delay pushes the viewer to the bitter realities of the Third World. These Third World realities include possible loss of a job that economically sustains the sizable family, the costs related to bringing up three young children by a single parent, old age homes in Montevideo (Uruguay’s capital) that are either too costly or are over populated with severely incapacitated elders to accommodate a less severe case of an old man struggling with the onset of dementia. While the world goes gaga over the subject and storytelling of Amour, the Uruguayan film The Delay is comparatively a lesser known and lesser celebrated cinematic work that underscores several social issues Haneke’s more sophisticated work never dealt with.

A modern "King Lear" played by first time actor Vallarino

One of the key issues The Delay deals with is with the travails of a single parent. At no point in the movie do the viewers get to know anything about the children’s father. Is he dead or alive? Was the mother married? Neither does Maria, the “Mother Courage” who is in her forties in this movie, ever talk about him or even indirectly refer to him. Rodrigo Plá’s film built on Laura Santullo’s script is very clear: the focus of the film is the relationship between a daughter and her aging father, just as Haneke’s film zooms in on the husband and wife relationship. All other characters in both films are mere foils to build the central relationship. The Plá-Santullo script includes a brief plea from Maria to her married sister to help take care of their father and the response is negative. The interaction is not so much to introduce and delve on the sister, but more to reiterate the situation of Maria and her commitment as a daughter to take care of her dad and her household of three growing kids all dependent on her as the sole breadwinner.  The script is equally silent on the absence of Maria’s mother—one can only assume she is dead.  So is the script clever in sidestepping the relationship of Maria with a male admirer, now married, who remains Maria’s only help in emergencies.  The script is equally clever in sidestepping the obvious action Maria ought to have taken in her search for her father, which she does at the end of the film. But then it is this cleverness that makes the film tick.

It is interesting to compare the scripts of the two films Amour and The Delay even further.  The response of Maria’s sister in The Delay contrasts starkly with the daughter of the old couple in Amour—both are averse to taking direct responsibility of the parent in distress and in urgent need for care.  The European and the economically stable frameworks presented in Amour’s screenplay offer a convenient way out for the daughter—place the parent in an affordable old age home. In The Delay, even for the less caring of the two daughters, the option would be to take care of the parent herself—which she refuses point blank for reasons never discussed in detail in the film. 

Maria (actress Blanco) combining "Cordelia" and "Mother Courage" 

The financial stress for the family plays a major emotional chord in The Delay, even though Maria’s family is not extremely poor by Third World standards. Maria works as a tailor/seamstress for a struggling medium-sized company and what she earns has to be hidden away in her stockings so that the money is not stolen or misspent. Even this hard earned sum gets almost destroyed when the stocking is put into the washing machine accidentally.  Director Plá and scriptwriter Santullo are able to weave in the financial stress and wry humor into the larger tale with a felicity that is commendable.  A hair-dressers wife in the movie wryly snaps at her husband (Maria’s long-term admirer) by stating that the value of his modest establishment has just hit the sky on the New York Stock exchange. And yet director Plá is not showing the warts of Uruguay’s less endowed environments but instead the middle class parts of Montevideo, clean and well maintained.

While Michael Haneke’s script of Amour focused on love between husband and wife, the Plá-Santullo script of The Delay deals with a similar love of a daughter for her father slipping further into dementia and/or aggravation of the Alzheimer’s disease. The financial stress leads to a sudden impulsive decision by the daughter Maria in The Delay, which is not very dissimilar to the sudden act  of the husband to end the misery of his wife in Amour. A viewer of The Delay could wonder where the love of the caring daughter seems to vaporize from that impulsive point onward.  And it is this brief switching off of the parental love in The Delay and the final resolution of the tale that makes the film admirable. The film provides sufficient clues that there is no fracture in the love between daughter and father. In fact, Maria is not just a daughter to her father but a “mother” to her father.

But how does director Plá make the script come alive? He gives ample footage to prove that the father has faith in his faithful daughter, like a Lear for his Cordelia.  He can wait and brave the cold and desolation in the faith that his daughter will ultimately rescue him. Even the sequences of strangers trying to help the old man are to no avail—the old man has faith in his daughter.  He is convinced that the true love resides is in his daughter’s heart, a love stronger than that of well meaning strangers. The old man not only refuses food and shelter but also urinates unwittingly while sitting on a park bench in the cold winter night and wants someone to clean him up, possibly the way his daughter would have done if he had done this in his daughter’s apartment. The director Plá’s ability to capture these feelings in a lonely cold urban landscape makes The Delay a major cinematic work of the year.

Unlike Haneke’s Amour, which had top class actors for Haneke to manipulate, director Plá had only actress Roxano Blanco (playing the lead role of Maria) who was a professional actor. Maria’s father, Augustin, is played by a first time actor Carlos Vallarino. Perhaps Mr Vallarino’s lack of confidence in front of the camera helped in portraying the forgetful and genial old man in the evening of his life. It is not surprising that some of the awards at minor festivals for this film have gone to Ms Blanco (at the Biarritz Latin American Film Festival) and to Mr Vallarino (at the Hamptons International Film Festival).  The more significant awards the film has picked up include the Celebrate Age Prize at the Mumbai International Film Festival, the Ecumenical Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival 2012, and the Best Director Award at the Pune Film Festival 2013–all deservedly for Rodrigo Plá—and the Best Screenplay Award for Laura Santullo at the Lima Latin American Film Festival. The spectrum of awards won on three different continents by this amazing little movie could not have accentuated its inherent strengths any better. It is a lovely counterpoint to Amour “sung” visually in a different style to highlight the sufferings of the elderly and the travails of those who try to ameliorate their pitiable condition.

P.S. La Demora (The Delay) is one of the top 10 films of 2012 for the author. It was also Uruguay's official submission to the Oscars 2013.

52. Mexican director Carlos Reygadas' "Stellet licht (Silent Light)" (2007): Visually and aurally breathtaking cinema

Can light have sound? So what is silent light? Something surreal, somehow related to the Christian hymn Silent night? The intriguing answers are provided in the film to the patient, thoughtful viewer. This is not a film for the impatient viewer. “Starlight” (accessible cosmic wonders) begins and ends the film—silence dominates the soundtrack, except for crickets, lowing of cattle, and an occasional bird cry.

This opening shot sets the tone for a film made with non-professional actors (real life Mennonites from several countries, according to reports) . The film won the Jury’s Grand Prize at Cannes 2007. It is a spectacular film experience for any viewer who loves cinema. This is my first Reygadas film and I have become an admirer of this young man.

Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas writes his own scripts. He is one of the few filmmakers of importance today who does that—alongside Spain’s Pedro Almodovar and Japan’s Naomi Kawase.

Reygadas’ stunning movie Silent Light dwells on a collapsing marriage within a religious Mennonite community in Mexico, speaking not Spanish (the language of Mexico) but a rare European language (Plautdietsch) that mixes German and Dutch words, leading up to the eventual renewal of this fragile family. Reygadas begins the film with a 6-minute long time-lapse photography of dawn breaking to the sounds of nature and ends the film with twilight merging into the night.

The opening shot was lost on many in the audience as a noisy viewer kept talking three minutes into the film, unaware that the film was running, until I had to reveal this fact to him at the 12th International Film festival of Kerala. The film's opening shot was so stunning that after the 6th minute the audience who grasped what was happening began clapping, having savored the effect. The last time I recall a similar involuntary reaction from an audience was when Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi was screened decades ago in Mumbai at another International Film Festival.

There is something magical, supernatural in nature if we care to reflect on daily occurrences. There is a touch of director Andrei Tarkovsky in Reygadas’ Silent Light as he captures the magical, fleeting moments in life that all of us encounter but do not register. There is a touch of director Terrence Mallick’s cinema as he connects human actions with nature (a heartbroken wife runs into a glen and collapses trying to clutch a tree trunk). And there is a touch of director Ermanno Olmi in the endearing rustic pace of the film. Whether he was influenced by these giants of cinema I do not know—but many sequences recall the works of those directors.

That the film recalls Carl Dreyer’s Ordet (1955) is an indisputable fact. Ordet was based on a play by a Danish playwright Kaj Munk. Reygadas film is based on his own script that almost resembles a silent film because of the sparse dialog. Both films are on religious themes, on falling in love outside marriage, and leading up to an eventual miracle. Reygadas uses these basic religious and abstract ingredients to weave a modern story that is as powerful as Dreyer’s classic work by adding the realistic and accessible components of nature—automated milking of milch cows (without milking, the cows would be in distress) and a family bathing scene—do seem to be included as daily occurrences that have a cyclical similarity to the main plot—the collapse and rebuilding of a marriage. Reygadas’ cinema invites the viewer to look at nature captured by the film and discover parallels to the story-line. This film is one of the richest examples of cinema today that combines intelligently a structured screenplay, creative sound management, and marvelous photography that soothes your eyes, ears and mind.

Early in the film, the “family” is introduced sitting around a table in silent prayer before partaking a meal. The silence is broken by the tick-tock of the clock. The children are obviously unaware of the tension in the room, except that they would like to eat the food in front of them. The adults are under tension. When the head of the family remains alone on the table (symbolic statement) he breaks into uncontrollable sobs. He gets up to stop the loud clock (symbolic) that evidently disturbed the silent prayer. This action becomes important if we realize that the clock never bothered the family silent prayers before. All is not well. Time has to stand still.

Composition of frames (see above) in the film remind you of Terrence Mallick—the balancing visuals of men and children sitting bales of hay on trailer—again recalling a cosmic balancing force in life

Both Silent Light and Ordet revolve around a miracle, where a woman’s love for a male lover and tears for his dead wife leads to calming a turbulent marriage. The film is not religious but the Mennonite world is religious. Religion remains in the background; in the foreground is love between individuals, lovers, husbands, wives, sons, parents, et al. What the film does is nudge the viewer to perceive a mystical, cosmic world, a world beyond the earth we live in, which is enveloped in love. There is a cosmic orbit that the director wants his viewers to note—a similar cyclical orbit to the erring husband driving his truck in circles as if in a trance on the farm. Mennonite children who are not exposed to TVs seem to enjoy the comedy of Belgian actor and singer Jacques Brel in a closed van. While Reygadas seems to be concentrating on the peculiarities of a fringe religious group, the universal truths about children’s behavior and adult behavior captured in the film zoom out beyond the world of Mennonites. They are universal.

The film begins in silence and ends in silence against a backdrop of stars in the night. The indirect reference to the Silent night (Stellet nacht) hymn is unmistakable. For the patient viewer here is film to enjoy long after the film ends. Reygadas' mastery of the medium is obvious. This is one of the most interesting films of the decade, but sadly will be lost totally on an impatient or distracted viewer.