Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonca Filho is best known for his three internationally-acclaimed fiction features: Neighbouring Sounds (2013), Aquarius (2016) and Bacurau (2019; co-directed by Juliano Dornelles). Pictures of Ghosts is a documentary. Yet this is hardly new territory for the helmer. Few people are aware that the director had already made a string of non-fiction movies, and that – despite making his first feature at the age of 45 – he devoted his entire life to cinema as a movie-goer, a videomaker, a filmmaker and a film programmer. Mendonca Filho started experimenting with film during his youth in his hometown of Recife, a bustling metropolis located in Northeastern Brazil.
Blending shelf-shot footage, archive images, clips from his own movies, and narrated by the filmmaker himself, Pictures of Ghosts is divided into three parts: the filmmaker’s neighbourhood, the movie theatres and the churches. Images of the past are a regular occurrence in Mendonca Filho’s filmography: his three feature films open with archive pictures of Brazil in the early 20th century.
In the first part, we learn how the Setubal district helped to shape Mendonca Filho and his films. We see images of how the streets have changed over the decades, with colonial estate houses and buildings progressively replaced by high rise structures. Violence soared, forcing residents to build towering walls around their properties. This is visible in Neighbouring Sounds, which is entirely filmed in the surroundings of the house where the director grew up. The large padlocks and barred gates look so menacing that people thought they were part of production design. A peculiar anecdote about his neighbour’s incessantly barking dog Nico explains the title of the movie, and the strange ways Brazilians find to protect themselves. Mendonca carefully observes the inevitable and unforgiving consequences of time, with buildings naturally decaying (termites catalysing the process) and eventually collapsing, giving way to new constructions (this cycle is the central topic of Aquarius).
The second part is the most historically fascinating one. We see pictures of the still-standing and also the defunct movie theatres of Recife. Audience numbers, crumbling projectors, film posters and even a short visit by Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis with their two small daughters in the early 1960s add some extra colour flavour to the journey. The Art Palacio Cinema was run by Ufa, Hitler’s film arm, in the 1930s. That’s because Brazilian president Getulio Vargas was very sympathetic towards Nazi ideals. Cinema Moderno has now become a large supermarket as featured in Aquarius. The lead of Mendonca Filho’s second feature is in fact a film star that he often watched on the silver screen during his youth: Sonia Braga. We are also informed that Recife was once of the two film hubs in Brazil, ensuring that films were widely distributed in the upper half of the nation. This changed in the turn of the century, when Sao Paulo became the only such place. This triggered the partial decadence of the film industry in Northeastern city.
The third part is barely distinguishable from the second, as the “churches” in reality refer to the movie theatres of yore and vice-versa. The Sao Luiz Cinema was erected in 1952 on the site of an Anglican church. Three prominent cinemas became evangelical temples in the 1980s. The movie theatre is a place to get on your knees and worship Glauber Rocha and Hitchcock, the director ascertains. The seventh art and religion have a profound affinity. Both are worthy of our devotion.
Pictures of Ghosts is Mendonca Filho’s most personal film to date. Similarly to Petra Costa in Elena (2012) and The Edge of Democracy (2019), the documentarist’s life story becomes a proxy for something else (Petra’s sister in her first film, her country in her second film, and the history of Recife/movie theatres in Mendonca Filho’s doc). For both Brazilian directors, autobiography becomes history, and history becomes autobiography.
The final scene is delightful. The director gently mocks the nature of cinema and the futility of stardom during an impromptu conversation with an Uber driver, while also inserting just the right amount of poetic freedom into his otherwise formal documentary. A tiny pinch of humour makes the film very flavoursome. Mendonca Filho is the master of subtleness. His narrative devices are urgent in their simplicity, promptly evoking emotion and laughter. Guaranteed to put a smile on your face!
Pictures of Ghosts premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival (when this piece was originally written), where the Brazilian director is both a familiar face and a regular guest. Also showing at he 41st Turin Film Festival.
A little town in the arid hinterlands of Northeastern Brazil has been erased from the map. Literally. Locals can no longer locate it on the various online applications. Someone (or something?) is killing the locals. There have been seven murders in one day. Small UFOs monitor the town from above. The locals are prepared to fight back for their survival. They also wish to protect their their identity and cultural heritage.
The fictional struggle depicted in Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles’s Bacurau has come to symbolise the very real struggle that Brazil is experiencing at present, as the country grapples with a profoundly authoritarian and obscurantist government. Bolsonaro has vowed to eradicate left wing ideologies, and he’s currently attempting to implement measures that are tantamount to censorship.
Bacurau premiered at the BFI London Film Festival to a lot of glitz and glam, on a Friday night red carpet gala event. Kleber and Juliano delivered a passionate speech, explaining that Brazilian artists and culture are being demonised. Meanwhile, Brazilian activists demonstrated on the red carpet, asking for Lula’s freedom [pictured below]. The highly popular left wing leader and former Brazilian president is currently a political prisoner.
Our editor Victor Fraga (who’s also Brazilian) sat down with Kleber and Juliano the following day. They talked about the state of Brazilian cinema, censorship, the armed struggle, movie genres, the role of the Brazilian Northeast in the resistance and much more!
Victor Fraga –Bacurau won the Jury Ex-Aequo Prize in Cannes, a brand new achievement for Brazilian cinema. Karim Ainouz’s The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmaoalso won a novel prize, the Un Certain Regards. Could you please talk about the significance of this double achievement, particularly in the light Brazil’s obscurantist and anti-culture government?
Juliano Dornelles – We are currently experiencing what’s perhaps the most important moment in the history of Brazilian cinema. That’s thanks to two things. First of all, the decentralisation of cinema, which moved away from the Rio de Janeiro/Sao Paulo axis, and started being produced in other states and regions. Secondly, there are more ways to make films thanks to technology developments. That said, we have been making films for many years, in my home state of Pernambuco, in the states of Ceara, Rio Grande do Sul, Minas Gerais, plus of course Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
And then this awful situation happens. The new government extinguished the Ministry of Culture in its first day in office. Plus he started talking about censorship as if that was a reality, but it’s not, because the Brazilian constitution establishes that it does not exist. These prizes mean that we have a lot of visibility, and the interest in Brazilian culture grows, impacting our pride and self-esteem.
Kleber Mendonca Filho – This is indeed the best moment that Brazilian cinema has ever experienced. When two films win memorable, historical prizes in Cannes. In the same year, it has a massive presence in Rotterdam, Berlin and Locarno. The newly-elected far-right government, however, decides to go in the opposite direction, destroying this very careful construction of Brazilian culture. We have been working for 15 years in a very democratic fashion in terms of filmmaking, with new policies which see funding being shared in a fair way, geographically speaking. There are more films being made in places where they were never made before, such as Pernambuco. We did not have a film community in our state 25 years. We had a few sparse productions. And of course Ceara and Minas Gerais. Right now we have an amazing moment that’s being basically deconstructed and destroyed, and that’s very sad.
VF – The Wild Wild West helped to define American counterculture. Will the Wild Wild Northeast define Brazilian counterculture? Is there a parallel?
KMF – The Brazilian Northeast has always defined Brazilian culture. It’s the very structure of Brazilian literature, cinema and music. The history of the Northeast explains a lot of what we do in Brazil. So it’s only natural that we should now come full circle with a film where most of the crew come from the Northeast, particularly from the state of Pernambuco. It’s not really a film about the Northeast, but it has a very strong social flavour and the historical aesthetics of the region. It’s interacting in such an amazing fashion with Brazil as a country, a nation and a society. The film has become a part of the conversation. It has become a mean. It’s a moment that we witness in awe, and that’s the most beautiful thing that can happen to us.
We share with the US many notions of landscape and of occupying the landscape. And that of course includes a lot of violence. Plus we are all Americans, we come from the Americas. The American West is known for its violence, and the genocide of the indigenous populations. And that’s also happening in Brazil. We just came from New York and the reactions to the film was astounding. There’s a very clear parallel. It’s like the mirror image.
VF –Locals have to resort to extreme violence in order to resist against colonialism and other reactionary forces. Do you believe in the armed struggle as a resistance weapon?
JD – I think that any person deserves respect as a human being. There are limits to your survival, to your life. Bacurau is just a film. I’m not in favour of violence. I don’t think that’s the way forward. At the same time, however, I’m also in favour of equality between people. And when someone is being threatened or unfairly treated, the reactions are unpredictable. Our film is about solidarity and respect.
KMF – Someone as a viewer should be able to differentiate between reality and a fiction film – with actors, special effects and a reasonable budget such as Bacurau, a piece of artistic expression and entertainment, and which draws from history. History informs us what we can do and write about, how we can look at society. Violent events are part of history. The Warsaw Ghetto informed us in order to write a movie about survival. Genocide was carried out The Jewish population were isolated in an area of the Polish capital, and systematically asphyxiated and killed. At which point, a group of people from inside the Ghetto decided to do something, and there was some violent action.
VF – The regional divide in Brazil is a prominent topic in your film. Southerners see themselves are racially and culturally superior, aligned, even sycophantic towards Americans and Europeans. Can Brazil overcome this divide, or will the Northeast have to continue to fend for itself?
KMF – The divide is historical. It is what it is. It’s how society develops, and it developed in all the wrong ways. The capital was unevenly divided, all the money went to the South and the Southeast, and this has been so since the 18th century in Brazil. Now we see the consequences. We have an invisible and yet very-much-present social, racial and economic divide. That’s not something that we made up for the film, it exists. We come from the Northeast, so we know what we are talking about!
I don’t know whether this will ever change. It takes many generations to promote change. Sadly I don’t see anything happening right now.
VF – Censorship is biting in in Brazil, with films such as Wagner Moura’s Marighella prevented from being shown, plus the film agency Ancine potentially turning into a propaganda machine. How can we fight back? Is private funding the way forward? Or international co-productions?
KMF – It’s very hard to answer that question because we’re treading on new ground. I have never been through what Brazilian cinema is going through right now in terms of basically being extinct. What I can say, and I’ve been talking to a lot of young filmmakers, very talented men and women in the their twenties, and late teens, and they are very passionate about Bacurau, and it’s an amazing moment to make films. You can now shoot a film with an iPhone like yours [he points to the device being used in order to record the interview] and with a simple computer you can get it done. You just have to say something about the situation in Brazil; just f**king say it with cinema!
It’s an amazing moment. Every time cinema is banned, something good comes out of it. That’s something Ariel Schweitzer from Cahiers du Cinema wrote last month, when Bacurau was in the cover of the magazinee. He devoted 25 pages to talk about the crisis of Brazilian cinema.
JD – The big question for me is: just fucking do it! That’s very important. That’s how this moment that we’re experiencing right now began. Because technology changed, and enabled people without the traditional production structure to make cinema. That’s how we can ensure that production doesn’t stop and vouch for our future.
The problem are the people who have become professionalised in the past 20 years, they are industry workers. What are they going to do now? That’s a question without an easy answer. If it wasn’t for Bacurau, I would be far more concerned about my career. Fortunately, our film is doing very well in terms of box office, but sadly many other good films haven’t had the same luck.
VF – To finish off our conversation, can you please talk about the role of cinema and the other media as a weapon of resistance?
JD – The biggest problem that we have face right now are the fake news. No one anticipated this would happen. We must be present various points-of-view, and cinema is very good at that. But other media can also be used. Even sitting down with someone, being patient and having a conversation at home can change a lot of things. We need to show that a lot of information that people are getting isn’t real. And that requires a massive effort. Nowadays you have to look at six or seven sources before you know whether the information is true. That includes the left wing media. Fake news are on both sides of the spectrum. You must be very careful, and people are not accustomed to checking information.
Just three years ago Kleber Mendonca Filho caused a political storm back in his homeland Brazil as he – alongside the rest of his crew – held signs on the red carpet of Cannes denouncing the coup d’etat that had just taken place in the country, at the premiered of his second film Aquarius. The image was splashed on the front page of the Guardian, and many other international newspapers. This year has been no such political gesture, yet Mendonca’s third film (co-directed by Juliano Dornelles, who was previously Mendonca’s production designer) Bacurau is as politically significant the 2016 feature.
The 132-minute story takes place in the semi-arid hinterlands (the sertão) of Northeastern Brazil, in the fictitious town of Bacurau, in the directors’ home state of Pernambuco. The action takes place “a few years from now”. The film begins with an image of space, suddenly zooming into South America, revealing that Brazil is entirely dark, surrounded by well-illuminated neighbours (as if all electricity had been suddenly cut off in the largest country of Latin America). The eerie 1969 song Não Identificado plays out, in the voice of Brazilian singer Gal Costa. The lyrics talk about “making a love song in a flying saucer”. That’s a hint of what’s about to follow.
The little town of Bacurau has been erased from the map. Literally. Locals can no longer locate it on the various online applications. Someone (or something?) is killing the locals. There have been seven murders in one day. Small UFOs monitor the town from above. The locals are prepared to fight back for their survival. They also wish to protect their their identity and cultural heritage. They cherish the Bacurau Museum, a small building where town’s invaluable artifacts are stored. The local doctor Domingas (Sonia Braga) is some sort of matriarch. Men, women and children are ready to take arms. They swallow a small pill (perhaps an indigenous psychotropic drug?) in order to acquire strength for the battle .
What starts out as a wacky sci-fi gradually morphs into something far more earthly. The killings are carried out by a group of American led by Michael (Udo Kier). The group leader was born in the US, but he has lived in the US for 40 years, we are told. Two sicarios from the Brazilian Southeast (a man called Joao from Sao Paulo, and a woman called Maria from Rio) go around on their motorbikes spreading terror. Michael tells Joao and Maria that they are not white, pointing to the female’s nose and mouth (a testament of her African genes). This is a commentary on American meddling in Brazilian politics and also on the cultural, social and economic divide between the Brazilian Northeast and Southeast. The latter region is more economically developed than the former, the most impoverished part of the country. Southeasterners often perceive themselves as “more European” and therefore “more developed”, a prejudice widely disseminated in Brazil, and here embodied by Joao and Maria.
The dry hinterlands of the Brazilian Northeast are the backbone of Brazilian cinema and identity. Brazilian religious leader Antônio Conselheiro famously professed: “the sertão will turn into sea, and the sea will turn into sertão”. The region was a recurring topic in Glauber Rocha’s filmography (Cinema Novo’s most famous exponent). The bandits of the 19th and 20th century (whose activity is known as cangaço, and often compared to American cowboys) became a symbol for resistance against the capitalistic system. Bacurau is a 21st century riff on the sertão and the cangaço.
It is no coincidence that Bacurau takes place a few years from now. Since the 2016 coup d’etat and the election of Bolsonaro, Brazil is experiencing a lingering fear of the near future. The extreme right-wing president has often voiced his dislike of the Northeast and any sort of social and political activism. He has expressed his desire to ban all such movements. He also has a taste for blood, is an enthusiastic advocate of torture and mass extermination. At one point in Bacurau, a television announces “public executions will begin at 14:00”. Bolsonaro is also fiercely anti-culture, having extinguished the Ministry of Culture in his first week in office. Perhaps more significantly, Bolsonaro is unabashedly and subserviently pro-US, and he favours any type of American meddling in the country.
The cultural significance of Bacurau is undeniable. More than 800 people were employed during the making of the film. Images and relic from the cangaço are featured prominently at the end of the story. As are the ultra-violent killing methods and torture techniques of the cangaceiros. The second half of the film is gilded with intertext and historical references. Academics will study Bacurau for many years and decades to come.
But Bacurau is also too arcane. I’m from the Brazilian Northeast myself, and I did not grasp many of these references. There are way too many characters, red herrings, mcguffins. Sonia Braga’s role is a little awkward. The actress – who’s originally from Southeastern city of Rio de Janeiro – is indeed formidable, but her accent does not fit in well in the Northeastern region (particularly for a film that comments on the divide between the two regions). In a nutshell, Bacurau is a necessary film, yet not without faults. A manna from heaven for the Brazilian resistance against Bolsonaro’s Philistinism. Yet non-Brazilians might find it a little difficult to digest.
Bacurau showed at the 72nd Festival de Cannes, when this piece was originally written. It won the Jury Prize (es-aequo), the third highest in the prestigious event. It will see its UK premiere in October as part of the BFI London Film Festival. In cinemas Friday, March 13th (2020). On Mubi on Friday, May 27th (2022).
Kleber Mendonça Filho gained worldwide notoriety last year for conducting a very timely protest on a star-studded platform. The filmmaker and the crew of his latest movie Aquarius held signs on the red carpet of the Cannes Film Festival in May last year denouncing the coup d’état, which was taking place in Brazil then. Images of the unusual gesture (pictured below) circulated the world, stamping the cover of many international newspapers (including The Guardian). The action coincided with start of coup process in Brazil, and the opening of the film months later (in August) took place at exactly the same time as the illegitimate ousting of President Dilma Rousseff.
But Kleber isn’t just a sexy moustached face on the red carpet. At present, he is the most commercially and critically acclaimed filmmaker in Brazil, with just two feature films under his belt. The outstanding Neighbouring Sounds (2011) explores the dull urban cacophony that ties together middle-class neighbours in the Brazilian city of Recife (Kleber’s hometown). It was elected by the New York Times as one of the best films of the past 10 years– click here for our exclusive review of the movie. Last year’s Aquarius tells the story of Clara, played by the legendary Sônia Braga, a woman who resists property developers who want to knock down the building where she has lived all of her life. She uses nostalgia as a shield against her fast-changing and deeply corrupt society, as well as an instrument for both physical and emotional survival – click here for our review of the equally splendid movie.
After showing at the BFI London Film Festival last year, Aquarius will be released in theatres all around the country on Friday, March 24th. Kleber traveled to the UK specially for the occasion, and DMovies‘ editor Victor Fraga met up with him for a dirty talk. We chatted the commercial success, prestige, democracy, the future of Brazilian cinema, Recife, Robocop, happy umbrellas and much more!
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Victor Fraga – Brazil is still a very exotic country in Britain, and most people would know neither where Recife is located nor that there was a coup d’état last year. How do you think people will relate to your film here?
Kleber Mendonça Filho – When I make a film I ask myself: will anybody see it, will it make any sense, will anyone care? I think every filmmaker should bear that in mind. I have been very lucky since I started making short films because they seem to travel quite well. All of my films did very well both in Brazil and internationally. In Neighbouring Sounds, I shot the film on the street where I live, it’s almost like a home movie, and made with just under $1 million, and it went to countries I never imagined it would.
With Aquarius, it’s even bigger. And the same story seems to take place everywhere. I’m convinced that people will relate to my film wherever there’s money and real estate. The main conflict is well understood by people everywhere. Of course you might miss out on a few details if you are not Brazilian. There are certain flavours that were built into the film which are naturally local. But I don’t think this will prevent Brits from understanding the film.
Kleber and his crew let the world know about the coup d’état in Brazil on the red carpet of Cannes
VF – So, Brits don’t need to know where Recife is in order to understand your film?
KMF – No. I grew up watching films from all over the world, as I’m sure you have. When I was at university I realised that American films were very good at presenting something that doesn’t belong to a specific culture. I love when films have a certain title which refers to a place. Such as Brighton Beach Memoirs [Gene Saks, 1986], The Umbrellas of Cherbourg [Jacques Demy, 1964], Woody Allen’s Manhattan [1979] and so on. I never knew where Cherbourg was until I watched the movie.
VF – But the Umbrellas of Cherbourg doesn’t mention Cherbourg in Brazilian title of the movie! [the film is called Os Guarda-Chuvas do Amor in Brazil, Portuguese for “The Umbrellas of Love”]
KMF – [sniggers] That’s true, oh well. Still, It was because of this film that I learnt where Cherbourg is. I love this mystifying power of cinema. I’m happy to report that the same is happening to my films in relation to Recife. This building here [he shows a picture of the eponymous Aquarius Building in Recife], they want to list it, to make it into a World Heritage Site, and my film can take the credit for that. Cinema has such power, and I’m glad that my film is doing it to this beautiful building.
VF – This is a very good moment for Brazilian cinema, 12 films at the last Berlin Film Festival, seven in Rotterdam, and the organisation Cinema do Brasil has more than 150 films in their catalogue. Are you concerned that the current coup-mongering government of Brazil will destroy this incredible momentum?
The Aquarius building in Recife, where Clara dwells and which she also cherishes so much
KMF – That’s the big question that everyone in the Brazilian film industry is asking right now. A lot of what we are seeing today, such as the films in Berlin and Rotterdam, the international acclaim of Neon Bull (Gabriel Mascaro, 2015) and The Second Mother (Anna Muylaert, 2015), this is all the result of years of investment and policy development supporting Brazilian film.
On one hand, we have a bunch of commercial films doing very well in Brazilian theatres. People think I’m against commercial movies, and that’s ridiculous. I just happen to belong to the other side, where we get more prestige than money. Although Aquarius had box office earnings which are not typical of a 150-minute film shot in Recife with a 65-year-old female protagonist [Clara, played by Sônia Braga]. So my film was both commercially successful and prestigious. And a lot of that came from the policies implemented by Lula from 2003. This is the incontestable truth. Some people might dislike the previous left-wing government of Brazil, but they can’t challenge this reality, which started with Lula and continued with Dilma. And now we have a completely different government, which is systematically destroying many public policies, there’s a grey cloud hanging over Brazilian cinema.
VF – Yourself, Cláudio Assis, Gabriel Mascaro, Marcelo Gomes, some of the Brazil’s most creative filmmakers are all from Recife. What is it with cinema from Pernambuco [the state where Recife is located]. Is it something in the water?
KMF – That’s a very tough question. Recife seems to be some sort of breeding ground, and not just for cinema. It is in literature, in the arts, in music. That was particularly true of the 1990s with the Mangue Beat movement in the music scene. And now we have the film scene, which is very strong! My theory is that after 400 years of sugarcane monoculture, when we were only known for sugarcane plantations and nothing else, things changed. This generated some inside mechanism forcing us to think “multi” instead of “mono”. With the presence of the Dutch invaders, combined with the distance from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, which were quite far away, we ended up with this very interesting breeding ground for culture.
Your question is asked every day in Brazil, particularly by cariocas as paulistas [people from Rio and São Paulo, respectively], and everybody is trying to understand how such cultural strength came to being.
VF – Globo is everywhere in Brazil: on print, the Internet, television and also in cinema, including your film [which was produced by Globo Filmes]. Do you think that it’s healthy for cinema, television and so on to be under purview of one single, extremely powerful organisation?
KMF – It’s not healthy at all. This is a huge discussion in Brazil right now. We need diversity of criticism and of points-of-view. Globo has historically, since the 1960s, dominated the media in Brazil, particularly in television. They have found ways of becoming even more diverse with the Internet and cable television. Now the power of Globo is being questioned through the Internet and social media, Netflix, Facebook and YouTube. At least now we can see some change in Globo’s outreach.
VF – What kind of changes?
KMF – People attention is being diverted to YouTube, Netflix (which is incredibly strong in Brazil) and so on. Plus people make their own programming.
VF – And how does that affect the film industry?
KMF – We have an interesting relation with Globo Filmes because I have always been their vocal critic. At the time of Neighbouring Sounds, I had a major fall out with their president Cadu Rodrigues. But now they have a completely new way of looking at Brazilian film, not just in relation to the “commercial side” but also to the “prestigious side”. It was very interesting that we got them to support Aquarius, you know why?
VF – No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me!
KMF – Aquarius is going to show on prime time Brazilian television, on Globo’s open channel. This is unheard of for such a long and non-commercial movie. For me that’s diversity.
Kleber Mendonça Filho and Victor Fraga from DMovies meet in London: they both believe that cinema is a weapon for change
VF – Film is a weapon for change, for denunciation, and you made good use of that in Cannes, when you held signs denouncing the Brazilian coup d’état on the famous red carpet. Can you tell us a little bit about the retaliation you have experienced since? And would you do it again?
KMF – If I had a time machine I could go back to May last year, I would have done exactly what we did. We as Brazilian citizens just did a very simple protest expressing our opinion about what was happening in Brazil: the democratic process in that very month [May 2016], and the result is what we see now. We were thinking of what’s happening right now back then. We has no choice but to quietly say: “this is wrong!”. And that what we did.
We had a lot of support for what we did, but also a lot of attacks, particularly on social media. And these attacks can be quite ravenous. Drunk and lonely guys on a Friday night go online and post some crazy shit about the film and about you. But this also brought attention to my movie. They tried to boycott it, which made it even bigger. It was just a crazy time when the film opened in Brazil, with the official ousting of Dilma Rousseff taking place then, in August, at the weekend of our release.
VF – The biggest Brazilian filmmakers of the past 20 years have all embraced an international career, including Sales with Motorcycle Diaries (2004), Fernando Meirelles with The Constant Gardener (2005) and José Padilha with RoboCop (2014). Will you be doing the same?
KMF – I’m open to possibilities, but it’s not like I dream of making a film in Hollywood.
VF – So you won’t be remaking RoboCop yet again for us then?
KMF – I would never in my life remake a film that I love, I just don’t see the point. And I absolutely love RoboCop [the 1987 original by Paul Verhoven] But, you know, good luck to… well, you know what I’m talking about! [at this stage, it’s worthwhile pointing out that José Padilha, who remade RoboCop, is one of the very few filmmakers in Brazil who supported the 2016 coup d’état].
If I make an interesting discovery in a book or a script then of course I would consider making a film abroad. But I would never make a film for some big shot just for the sake of making money. I wouldn’t do something that’s purely industrial, and not personal at all.
The largest country in Latin America is a mosaic of cultures and races, but also of conflicts and paradoxes. Kleber Mendonça Filho’s latest film has come to epitomise those in the shape of the Clara, an obstinate and tenacious woman probably in her 60s, mother to three children and several grandchildren. She lives in a building named Aquarius, in the Brazilian city of Recife.
A construction company has acquired all the other flats in Aquarius, and plan to demolish the building in order to give room to a new development, aptly named Novo Aquarius (New Aquarius). The problem is that Clara refuses to nudge, despite being offered a very high sum of money and being pressurised by nearly all people surrounding her, including her family and her former neighbours. Her headstrongness seems irrational and unfounded, as it’s not safe for a woman of her age to live in an empty building on her won, particularly in a country as violent as Brazil. Her stubborn behaviour is a consequence of the often callous and unforgiving society in which she lives, as well as the awareness of her own mortality due to a very grave disease. On the surface Brazil often seems friendly and cordial, but the reality is that people can also be brutal and ruthless.
Gradually you begin to understand why Clara is so reluctant. A physical scar is revealed in the beginning of the movie, but the emotional scars are far more numerous more prominent. Despite living a reasonably wealthy life, surrounded by a loving and caring family, Clara consistently resists change and fears the inescapable cycles of life. Life here isn’t exclusive to humans. She clings to her old vinyls, old books and her old flat with the vigour of a drowning man holding a buoy. She watches in horror as a gravedigger removes the bones from a grave likely to give space to a new burial. Clara is petrified by the fact that everything comes to an end.
In a way, Clara’s firmness is invigorating. She resists a large and powerful corporation, which resorts to the dirtiest tricks in order to scare her off. This includes throwing loud orgies in the empty flat directly above, hiring the building to large evangelical ceremonies and leaving faeces on the staircases. Yet nothing seems to work, forcing the frustrated developers to come up a very unusual and radical solution.
The 145-minute film will take you on a ride of Brazilian sleaze (known as “jeitinho brasileiro”, or “the little Brazilian way”), sexuality, family values, classism, racism and other types of prejudice, and you are unlikely to get bored. This is Kleber Mendonça’s second film, and perhaps its only flaw is that it lacks the dark subtlety of Neighbouring Sounds (his first film, made in 2011 – click here for our review of the film). That is the problem when a director sets the bar so high already in their first endeavour.
Aquarius premiered in Cannes earlier this year, where the actors held signs after the screening denouncing the recent coup d’état in Brazil. The illegitimate Brazilian government retaliated by giving the film an adult certificate and also by not submitting it to the Oscars. Several Brazilian filmmakers – including Gabriel Mascaro, Eliane Caffé and Aly Muritiba – demonstrated solidarity with Mendonça Filho by withdrawing their films from the competition. Aquarius – already a symbol of physical and emotional resilience – has since also become a symbol of political resistance.
The movie was showed as part of the BFI London Film Festival, when this piece was originally published. It was out in cinemas in March, and made available on Netflix in June.
