Vidas Secas (Barren Lives)
Picture: C
Sound: C Extras: C Film: B-
Brazil is a country with two identities, that of the
tourist paradise and of hard times. The
former is usually what Hollywood and other commercial productions go for, but
the latter is one that still does not get enough attention. Staring back in the early 1960s, the Cinema
Novo movement was not getting proper recognition in major world cinema texts
well into the 1970s, a peak of film study.
DVD is changing that and one of the key films, Nelson Pereira dos
Santos’ Vidas Secas (1963) has arrived in the format.
It takes place in the early 1940s and shows the plight of
a family is barely making a living and surviving under impoverished
conditions. An adaptation of the book
Graciliano Ramos’ popular book about people trapped at what feels like the end
of the world; the end of life. We have
seen this before, most famously in The Grapes Of Wrath, but in other
films like Salt Of The Earth and even Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate. However, dos Santos’ adds a certain personal
touch, a certain visual poetry that distinguishes this from other classics and
even some pro-communist propaganda films that want to make illicit appeals to
the audience.
There is some joy, not pity here, because these are not
all jaded characters. The stereotype is
the opposite. The world the film frame
creates is not unlike Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout (1970) and is so dense
that you can almost feel tired and/or engulfed by this world for which limited
escape seems possible outside of death.
Cinema Novo may sometimes be ignored by being bunched up into a Third
World Cinema movement, but even if it has some common denominators with this,
it is more than distinctive enough to get the revisionist thinking it deserves. Vidas Secas is at least a minor
classic that deserves rediscovery.
The 1.33 X 1 image shows its age in both the print and the
transfer. The white credits are like
old subtitles that fade in the background, while the black and white print is
muddy, with detail troubles that do not do justice to the cinematography by
Luiz Carlos Barreto and José Rosa. The
Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono shows the age of the print as well, even if it was shot
on a low budget. Extras include
trailers for other New Yorker DVDs, a fine if too-short discussion by Robert
Stam about the film and Cinema Novo, the short film Baleia The Dog
that recalls the shooting of this film and the pullout inside the DVD case has
an interview with director dos Santos and some brief text on Cinema Novo.
- Nicholas Sheffo
