Prata Palomares (1972)

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Dir. Andre Faria

Honestly, as physically availability becomes less of a concern in how I treat what I look to watch for in cinema, the question of how cinema itself is treated is subjected to questioning. The notion of what cinema is meant to do and represent; as I watch this sort of cinema more, concepts such as tone, politics and structure are broken down. The lack of availability of a film like Prata Palomares, and the fact that its use of Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stone at the end will make it difficult to release the film uncut, makes the influence of films like this one more powerful for me, the suppression of films like it for distribution reasons adding to the potency of things it breaks. Films like this become difficult to gage with because of this, but have a more pronounced effect on your thoughts when you can gage with them. It's a perverse irony that this Brazilian film, made during a military government that prevented the film from being shown at two Cannes Film Festivals, is now only available for me to see, in a period of freedom of speech in most places, from a copy ripped from a VHS tape from an unknown dimension. Consumerism turns out to be more powerful than a dictatorship.

The film itself is about the dangers of compromise. Two wounded revolutionaries wait in a church in a local village for a mission to be started. One pretends to be the priest that was supposed to take over the church, at first using it to bring the people together against the corrupt upper-class family that runs the town, but through an existential crisis becomes a lapdog for their words. All of this is presented in an abstract and unconventional film which shifts from the polemic to the gruesomely surreal. There's material reminiscent of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Glauber Rocha. The violence reminds me of José Mojica Marins too, whose horror films made him an unexpected political rebel when the same Brazilian government that suppressed this film banned his too. Prata Palomares is its own unique, charged film though, which like many films from South America I've seen, have a rawness where local culture, of countries and regions, meet the complications of politics, morality and urbanisation with a vivid metaphorical and phantastical bent. There's a brutalness in the violence and despair felt by the lowest in social ladders even in an abstract presentation. It's incredibly passionate filmmaking that is desiring to create real rebellion.

I confess the first part of the film, where the rebels are by themselves in the church, shouting at each other, was a struggle. In fact, for its moments of goodness, it's the worst of experimental polemic cinema, that which would actually compromise any revolutionary message in how it feels like it's a herd mentality wrapped in broad, unintentionally ridiculous pretence. But when a woman, a possible Virgin Mary figure for the revolutionary cause, enters their bubble and one of them becomes the "priest", the film truly starts to become a great work. Full of transgressive imagery - cannibalism, a church as a literal execution dudgeon, police death troops assaulting people - the issue in the middle of its message of how the left wing revolutionary can become compromised, distorted and a tool for the state is still relevant today and gives this messy film power. How anyone can confuse what they should do, regardless of political bench they're sat on, and end up being a lapdog or a deluded liberator. It does have some compromised thoughts. At first this sole female character of note is there only to give birth to the children of revolution, although this thankfully changes, in a film of archetypes and stereotypes, when even destroyed she's still the strongest force of the rebellion. It's also a revolution where one of the evil, decadent family - American, older woman pasted up in make-up, corrupt little girl who adores the violence - is clearly signposted as such by being effeminate and gay. This is a minor detail but it's another irony to write about with this film, where the issue of what one character's revolutionary ideals are questioned, that the message of the film is questionable in small details, the danger of this coming off as a brutish, heterosexual masculinity being projected from the film rather than an idealism for a new political utopia apparent in aspects like this. Details that could retrograde these ideals to the same mentality of the decadence its rebelling against. With someone like Alejandro Jodorowsky, he had the right idea of presenting decedent sexuality not in terms of specific sexuality, but when all sexuality becomes merely to consume another through corrupt and visually grotesque tackiness.

Despite these few details though Prata Palomares still has a great deal to stand out. The "priest" at first has the right idea - that the Christian God and Jesus were subversives for the downtrodden, or at least question God but use the cross as a symbol of unity - but he compromises himself into the puppet for others who wish to crush humanity through brainwashed spirituality. His desire for peace and non violence becomes as a means to shut up the anger of the downtrodden in a very clever flourish at one point. What makes the film spectacular when it fully immerses itself into its plot is how complex and unconventional it is. Even when corrupted, or just insane, the "priest" can be right. He destroys his comrade's revolutionary streak, in the best scene of the film, by pointing out that for all his polemic words, he's lost the one word needed to make his desire for upheaval of worth. Christians just need two sticks together in the shape of a cross he says, and his friend doesn't have this but empty phrases. But the "priest" is also a coward and easily manipulated, suffering from the same flaw. When revolution is seemed to have been won in the ending, what he does is no less ugly than what the former leaders did - in fact its more pathetic and off-putting in its farcical delusion of utopia. The one sole exception who is consistent is the woman, a politicised Mary Magdalene, who beret the men throughout the film for their compromises, but even she is literally silenced.

The film is difficult, shifting in place and full of dialogue that needs to be digested. The acting is stylised, with large portions screamed at high levels and a character at one point ramming his head into walls out of self mutilation. Sometimes the rebels just scream for large passages over what they're witnessing. It's an aggressive and abrasive work which matches its rich, ideological questions with the form of a blunderbuss shot, surreal images and a unconventional time structure even when following its small plotline. Unfortunately this reckless, difficult filmmaking is rarely seen now because even alternative cinema seems to have a tendency to copy mainstream filmmaking. By the seventies film could be trangresssive and legitimately dangerous, with many films that are still difficult to assess or handle even today for the modern cinematic canon. Prata Palomares is chaos onscreen and it's not surprising it was suppressed by the Brazilian government of the time, not just because of its message, but its tone and erratic nature which obliterates any sense of good taste. The difficulty of the film, even that sluggish first quarter, is now a nectar for me as a viewer. I am bored by what is to be expected and safe; it means nothing because I will forget it and, even by the virtues of mere entertainment, not have enough to actually entertain me. A film like this challenges my perceptions and my politics, and for glaring flaws, the challenge is rewarding as a film viewer but also in expanding the thoughts in my mind. Sadly films like this can only be seen, literally, on a muddy VHS rip from origins I don't know of. Thus it feels like a need to find films like this is a minor rebellion to clean out what I've been stuck with as cinematic art. Less elitism, more bored frustration, and befitting a film made to promote subversive ideology for utopian ideas, its complexity asks as well that even the concept of cinema should not be left to follow one style but question it continually. 

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