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‘Bacurau’ is a modern Western set in rural Brazil W
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We’re s In Thi r! Togethe “BACURAU” STARTS WITH A WILD RIDE through the “sertao,” the Brazil-
ian equivalent of Australia’s Outback. A truck driver carting water to a remote village in Pernambuco gives a ride to a beautiful young woman returning for a funeral. Along the pothole-filled road, they swerve to avoid a crash, where a pile of coffins has spilled into the road, and they seem remarkably unfazed by the wreckage. Eventually they arrive at the village of Bacurau, where townspeople have gathered for the funeral of Carmelita, a 94-year-old matriarchal figure. The ceremony is interrupted by a woman yelling denunciations of Carmelita. It’s Domingas, the town doctor, whom everyone dismisses as being drunk. It’s a busy and strange beginning to directors Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles’ 2019 film, which won a jury prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. They cleverly hide the forces at work with a flurry of bizarre happenings and nods to various film genres. For a small town with most of its buildings lining a short dirt road, Bacurau is a strangely troubled place. Water has to be delivered by trucks. Tony Junior, a regional politician is running for re-election, but the townspeople go into hiding when his frontier motorcade arrives. Medical and food supplies are laid out on a table for distribution, and Domingas warns that much of the food is expired and the drugs are not just pain killers but mood inhibitors meant to pacify them. A school teacher tries to show his students where their town is on an internet map, but it does not appear online or in devices using GPS. Unseen gunmen shoot at vehicles on outlying roads. And then there are the annoying American tourists. Despite flirtations with mystical religion, psychedelic drugs, UFO-like sightings in the sky and other odd
P H OTO P R OV I D E D BY K I N O LO R B E R
phenomena, the ominous state of a seemingly forgotten town fighting for its survival ultimately makes “Bacurau” a modern Western. It’s set in the near future, and instead of wanted posters nailed to saloon walls, a pickup truck mounted with a giant video screen runs a top 10 list of wanted criminals, complete with what looks like security camera footage of murders. The bandits all have one-word nicknames, and the villagers whisper about their region’s most famous outlaw: Lunga. The film works like an ensemble piece, more concerned with the plight of the village than any one of its colorful characters. Domingas is played by Brazilian film and TV star Sonia Braga, known for her role in “Kiss of the Spider Woman” and recently as Jesus Quintana’s mother in John Turturro’s “The Jesus Rolls.” Thomas Aquino plays the handsome vigilante Pacote. Barbara Colen is the hitchhiker who brings medicine to the village in the opening scene. “Bacurau” is meant to be one of the villages founded by escaped slaves seeking freedom far from the rest of civilization. The townspeople are an ethnically diverse group, and many seem tied to Carmelita in some way. The group seems to be at the mercy of the whiter and more prosperous national centers of Brazil, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, but Filho and Dornelles have set their intimate story against changing and ominous global forces, and the frontier is the perfect setting for an ultimately bloody fight for survival. “Bacurau” is available online, and viewing links from The Broad Theater (www.thebroadtheater.com) and Zeitgeist Theatre & Lounge (www.zeitgeistnola.org) allow the theaters to share the viewing fee. — WILL COVIELLO
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