Terra Estrangeira

Foreign Land (1996)
Marcos Bernstein written
Millor Fernandes written
Walter Salles written, directed
Daniela Thomas written, directed

Ok, so I am hopelessly behind the times with good cinema, and Netflix looks better and better as an entertainment option but I resist, because it seems all so planned... what? you mean actually get the movie that you want to see when you ask for it? Novel. I know. But I like the serendipitous possibilities that sprout from a trip to the video store, and I am trying to reject online activity as my primary form of interaction with the world. It is a losing battle, and it sounds a bit like the death throes of a beached walrus whose tusks have become embedded in the ice.

Breathtaking, truly.

This film is amazing in several ways that are of interest to me of late and mayhaps will be to you. First, it is beautifully filmed in a gritty black and white which acts to enhance the tension in the tightly intertwined plot. It is a film noir without any cheeky humor to distract us from the ultimate crux of the argument: what is it to be eternally desterrado? Exiled within your own skin?

The narrative development is crisp, if not linear, and while the characters are more like rough sketches, the inner core of each is vibrant. (If you have read any of my stories, this is my own personal tendency, so it stands to reason that I liked this) It presents semi-anonymous characters, whose past is a mystery but whose experience of the present is fiercely immediate and universal at the same time.

The film plays with the ideas of accidental or fateful meetings, and with the feeling of eternal otherness that those whose lives have been uprooted feel regardless of where they end up reestablishing their roots. Its violence is extreme but controlled, never gratuitious.

What I found most interesting, well, besides the interesting play between the players from the Madre Patria and the colonies, and the inherent hierarchies that are present, between Portuguese, Brazilians and Angolans, was that this was a collective production. So much of what we are expected to do, it seems, is individual, as if we were all initially together and we passed through a funnel dropping out in little droplets of individual genius. I don't think that this is ultimately a fruitful system, or at least, it doesn't work for me. I am left wondering why it is unacceptable these days to make collective texts. It isn't, I know, there are people all over the world making projects where you write a chapter and then somebody else writes another... but that isn't really what I am looking for either, as there is no vouching for the quality or aesthetic of your co-conspirators.

So clearly I was pleased by the superior outcome of this film whose conception was a collective writing and directing project. It gives me hope.

And indeed, despite the desperation of the closing action, we are left with a tenuous string of possibility: a return to the homeland? A new life? A sweet death?