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| http://titlovi.com/images/posters/Prata-Palomares_dfb6e998.jpg |
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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