更新时间:2019-10-05
他他 • 巴克劳:[Film Review] Bacurau (2019) 7.3/10
Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho’s third feature, sharing both director and writer’s credits with his production designer Juliano Dornelles, BACURAU, which means “nightjar” in English, is the name of a remote village in Brazil’s backcountry, where our nominal protagonist Teresa (Colen) returns to attend her 94-year-old grandmother’s funeral, who is the matriarch of the place, yet the villagers start to realize something uncanny is underfoot: the bullet holes on the truck which transports water for their daily use, a saucer-shaped drone materializes out of nowhere, the advent of two shady cross-country motorcyclists (Teles and Saboia), and most bizarrely, the village completely vanishes from all the digital maps.
After two villagers are shot point-blank when they discover the family of a nearby farm has been ruthlessly slaughtered, the bizarre lay of the land begins to clarify itself: a team of American mercenary gunslingers, led by Michael (Kier), is going to annihilate the entire village for pecuniary gain (one can fairly guesstimate who is their funder), and the whole village rises to the occasion collectively and valiantly, a climatic, Tarantino-esque pitched battle will settle the score once and for all, Manichaean and stirring like a vintage oater/slasher, and heads will definitely roll.
Awarded with Cannes’ Jury Prize, BACURAU assertively establishes Mendonça Filho’s move into the magic realism with vim and vigor (an idiom rooted profoundly in South America’s cinema soil): a clamorous funeral ritual where no tears is shed, in lieu there are pensive looks, exclamation and spiritual celebration; absurd encounter between villagers and two outsiders with tension sizzling underneath the casual pleasantries; and the virile braggadocio embodied by Lunga (Pereira, a queer actor who is famous for his cross-dressing flamboyance), the tribal warrior vowing for retaliation to the American intruders. While the interrelationship among those mercenaries borders on clichés of vulgarity, ethnocentric swagger and disturbing racism (one of them confesses that he balks at the idea of initiating a killing spree stateside, and is very grateful to the opportunity of unleashing his trigger-happy monomania onto another continent/race), one can clearly read Mendonça Filho and Dornelles’ grievance towards Brazil’s current despondent political climate (the virulent influence of USA) and the country’s own troubled post-colonial identity, where repressed anger and poetic justice make the fur fly in its gory but cathartic showdown, precipitated by a nude couple’s composed self-defense, elated by the throbbing electronic backbeat from its composers, but also muddled by Michael’s own equivocal, self-defeating caprice (and a blink-you-will-miss-it apparition).
Among the vast and capable cast, Mendonça Filho and Dornelles venerably put two cinema icons in the foreground, veteran Udo Kier pointedly underlines an arresting madness in his mad-keen glare whereas a cantankerous Sônia Braga runs away with the undiminished strength and steely resolution residing inside an old guard. BACURAU might not possess the slow-burning dramaturgy and reflective sensibility which grace Mendonça Filho’s AQUARIUS (2016), but as a genre-bending anomaly, it is an enterprising doozy highlights an emboldened Mendonça Filho’s gutsy exploration out of his own comfort zone.
referential entries: Kleber Mendonça Filho’s AQUARIUS (2016, 8.3/10); Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn’s THE DISTINGUISHED CITIZEN (2016, 7.9/10); Joaquim Pedro de Andrade’s MACUNAIMA (1969, 6.6/10).
After two villagers are shot point-blank when they discover the family of a nearby farm has been ruthlessly slaughtered, the bizarre lay of the land begins to clarify itself: a team of American mercenary gunslingers, led by Michael (Kier), is going to annihilate the entire village for pecuniary gain (one can fairly guesstimate who is their funder), and the whole village rises to the occasion collectively and valiantly, a climatic, Tarantino-esque pitched battle will settle the score once and for all, Manichaean and stirring like a vintage oater/slasher, and heads will definitely roll.
Awarded with Cannes’ Jury Prize, BACURAU assertively establishes Mendonça Filho’s move into the magic realism with vim and vigor (an idiom rooted profoundly in South America’s cinema soil): a clamorous funeral ritual where no tears is shed, in lieu there are pensive looks, exclamation and spiritual celebration; absurd encounter between villagers and two outsiders with tension sizzling underneath the casual pleasantries; and the virile braggadocio embodied by Lunga (Pereira, a queer actor who is famous for his cross-dressing flamboyance), the tribal warrior vowing for retaliation to the American intruders. While the interrelationship among those mercenaries borders on clichés of vulgarity, ethnocentric swagger and disturbing racism (one of them confesses that he balks at the idea of initiating a killing spree stateside, and is very grateful to the opportunity of unleashing his trigger-happy monomania onto another continent/race), one can clearly read Mendonça Filho and Dornelles’ grievance towards Brazil’s current despondent political climate (the virulent influence of USA) and the country’s own troubled post-colonial identity, where repressed anger and poetic justice make the fur fly in its gory but cathartic showdown, precipitated by a nude couple’s composed self-defense, elated by the throbbing electronic backbeat from its composers, but also muddled by Michael’s own equivocal, self-defeating caprice (and a blink-you-will-miss-it apparition).
Among the vast and capable cast, Mendonça Filho and Dornelles venerably put two cinema icons in the foreground, veteran Udo Kier pointedly underlines an arresting madness in his mad-keen glare whereas a cantankerous Sônia Braga runs away with the undiminished strength and steely resolution residing inside an old guard. BACURAU might not possess the slow-burning dramaturgy and reflective sensibility which grace Mendonça Filho’s AQUARIUS (2016), but as a genre-bending anomaly, it is an enterprising doozy highlights an emboldened Mendonça Filho’s gutsy exploration out of his own comfort zone.
referential entries: Kleber Mendonça Filho’s AQUARIUS (2016, 8.3/10); Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn’s THE DISTINGUISHED CITIZEN (2016, 7.9/10); Joaquim Pedro de Andrade’s MACUNAIMA (1969, 6.6/10).
巴克劳Bacurau(2019)
又名：杀戮荒村(台) / 夜鹰
上映日期：2019-05-15(戛纳电影节) / 2019-08-29(巴西)片长：131分钟
主演：芭芭拉·科伦 / 托马斯·阿基诺 / 西弗罗·佩雷拉 / 塔尔德尔·利马 / 鲁本斯·桑托斯 / 威尔逊·拉贝洛 / 卡洛斯·弗朗西斯科 / 露西安娜·索扎 / 卡林·特莱斯 / 安东尼奥·萨瓦 / 索尼娅·布拉加 / 乌多·基尔 / 布达·里拉 / 克莱比亚·索萨 / 丹尼·巴博萨 / 乔尼·马尔斯 / 克里斯·杜贝克 /
导演：儒利亚诺·多赫内利斯 / 小克莱伯·门多萨 / 编剧：朱利亚诺·多内莱斯 Juliano Dornelles/小克莱伯·门多萨 Kleber Mendonça Filho
