In ‘Bacurau’, an isolated village in the arid wilderness of north-eastern Brazil, the much-loved and respected village matriarch, Carmelita, dies aged 94 years, leaving everyone in mourning. When Teresa (Bárbara Colen), her granddaughter, returns home for the funeral, a series of strange and sinister events start to threaten the peace and stability of the village. The potable water truck is riddled with bullet holes, the local farmers’ horses run wild, the cell phone coverage fails and a child playing near the weak street light in the evening, is mysteriously shot dead.
Funeral Procession for 'Carmelita'
As tensions rise, the villagers realize they are under siege from an unknown enemy. Unbeknown to them, the local mayor has ‘sold’ the village to a group of blood-thirsty gringo hunters, led by cult- film legend Udo Kier. Pacote (Thomas Aquino), a young villager, manages to contact a local band of ‘outlaws’. This motley crew, led by the charismatic Lunga (Silvero Pereira), agrees to return to help the people fight back. Despite echoes of Kurosawa mingled with John Carpenter, Alejandro Jodorowsky or even Ted Kotcheff, this film is a highly original and fresh futuristic parable.
The two directors are old friends and colleagues at times being so close they finished off each other’s sentences...
“There were a lot of inspirations for this film. The first one was a desire to make a genre film together …about the contradictions in Brazil and about how journalism and the media and even some films in Brazil represent people from these far-away communities. They are represented as simple, kind of cute… exotic and sweetly ignorant people." says Juliano Dornelles, (JD)" Kleber and I were at a film festival in 2009, where Kleber was releasing a wonderful short film called ‘Cold Tropics’ and we saw many ethnographic documentaries. Some were good… kind of nice, but all of those films repeated the same pattern of representation … [even if] they were well- meaning …
“… they did not even go that far, but you know you can sense something in the frame and the reasons as to why ‘that’ scene is included in the film …” Kleber Mendonça Filho, (KMF) adds
JD: I’ll give you a very, very disturbing example of what I am trying to say. In one of those documentaries, there were 3 old ladies who work with the fruit from a very specific tree. Then, there is a scene in a river where these 3 old ladies are bathing in a river …with their breasts exposed…(KMF) …Almost like a photo shoot…! (JD) …There was no need for this scene, because they have their own bathrooms in their houses and they don’t bathe in the river… especially in that particular formation…(KMF).. with perfect light, all three together… so it’s false… and, not only false, but a humiliating imposition of one’s vision onto 3 characters that have nothing to do with that vision. That’s an extreme example. The one I was trying to convey was even more subtle, from some of the good films, but which still makes you feel a little …ugh… like saying ‘…don’t do this!... It is insulting! …(JD) … So, we decided to make a film about a very credible and awesome community with wonderful people… who the outsiders would be surprised to find out about, and that was the … embryo of the original idea.”
The story of ‘Bacurau’ has been interpreted as the depiction of a town or even a country ‘for sale’, but the directors insist that they looked at the issues from another point of view, despite accepting that that could be a feasible interpretation, but their real deeper inspirations came from a history of ‘invasions and wars, armed conflict…”
(JD)“ If you think from Genghis Khan to the Roman Empire, to what happened in Europe during the Second World War, Bosnia, Serbia, the war in Vietnam… these are all things that informed all of us as people … [people invading ruthlessly] which is very silly but it’s been happening for centuries so we built up this film based on those ideas and that’s how we wrote the script for ‘Bacurau’…although, the idea of ‘selling the country’ can be quite accurate, it’s not what we had in mind.”
(KMF) “…One thing I did discuss with Juliano was about when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Ukraine and Belarus. There were many fascinating and shocking stories about the collaborators … Ukrainians who helped the Nazis against their own Ukranian people, … Vichy in France was also dramatic, but when you think about what happened in Ukraine and Belarus, it represents quintessential brutality!”
Udo Kier as Michael
Both directors were particularly moved and impressed by the talent and abilities that emerged from the people of the small remote village where they were filming. They had hired some professional actors of quality, like Udo Kier, who has played in over 200 films and Sonia Braga, who is very famous all over Brazil and the world, plus a newcomer Bárbara Colen and young actors like Silvero Pereira and Thomas Aquino, but it was ‘the treasure trove of amazing people’ [from the actual village] that really moved them.
(JD)“…in fact, we were talking about this in one of the early interviews we had in Canada and we both began to cry! It was a very strange moment and the guy from New York was kind of … ‘what is happening??’ (laughs). But it was because we had found these amazing people! They had answered the casting call from our local collaborators.… and every time we saw their faces on the videos [that were sent to us, we realized that] all you had to do was photograph them wandering around, [and take] some close-ups here and there. Some were so good that they got speaking parts!... for instance, that lady that says “Some outfit kid!” when Lunga arrives at the village!... Now, she’s acting in other films, because people discovered her and they invited her. She’s more than 70 years old, but she has become an actress! She lives in the village where the film was shot and she travelled 4 hours to see the film in a multiplex in the city of Natal, which is the capital of the area and when she was leaving the screening, people recognized her and she was given a standing ovation!”
The choice of actors is interesting and varied, in particular Silvero Pereira who plays Lunga. He is a professional who has been involved in theatre and is a well-known activist for LGBT rights: -
Silvero Pereira as Lunga
(JD) “He’s been involved in a play which has been on for years, about being trans and a transvestite amid violence against transvestites in Brazil. It’s very strong material and he’s amazing. Initially Lunga was differently scripted, but once we took him on board, we said: ‘we are two heterosexual men and we don’t want to impose anything on you. You tell us how you want to do this role, you wear what you want to wear and the character will do what you want him to do, or she, if that is what you prefer. Silvero became very famous because he did a soap opera in Brazil (‘A Força do Querer) interpreting a trans-woman with very long hair. When we invited him to talk to us about this production, he immediately went to the barber and cut his hair very short to show us that he could do anything.”
Water is hugely symbolic in the north east of Brazil, having ‘morphed into a cultural icon’ of the struggles of the local people in the area.
“It’s become the perfect excuse for politicians to not care about [the area] because it’s a semi-arid region. So, it’s dry by nature, but you can fix that with technology and infrastructure, so it’s only a good excuse… for making a lot of money on the side, that never goes anywhere… corruption. In ‘Bacurau’, of course, there’s the canal that was built by the lawyers and in the film the politician builds a makeshift dam, that [in the end, only] blocks the water, so he can use it for his own ends.”
There is a disturbing ‘trippy’ scene where water seeps out of Carmelita’s coffin, as if things had transformed into something else, bringing good to the people. In all this, there was an equally ‘trippy’ situation in real life, because during the 2 months of filming, they had a freak situation when it would not stop raining, so their ‘arid’ area was turning very green, complicating the filming requirements! As with this inexplicable event, that touched on magical realism, the film had hidden depths and more levels than one could have imagined. The ‘simple’ villagers turn out to be anything but, with subterranean levels being revealed: -
(JD)“In the main street we had this hole that was supposed to be the secret arsenal of ‘Bacurau’. It was used to incarcerate the baddies, as well as to hide themselves… if you think about London, Rome, Paris, even some cities in Latin America, or the Amazon forest… they’ve discovered a lot of subterranean things …! (KMF)…I also love the idea that a city exists in different layers of history and ‘Bacurau’ exists in one or two very simple layers of history, but it’s down there all the time, even if you never see it during the film… until Lunga suddenly says: -‘ Well, it’s time to dig a hole … what the…? Then they start digging and they seem to know what they are doing and … I really like the idea that there’s a second ‘Bacurau’ under the surface… it fits with everything inside the museum [in the village] from where Lunga and his band emerge.”
Sonia Braga as Dominga, the doctor.
Significantly the list of ‘Thanks’ includes luminaries like Caetano Veloso, Walter Salles and Wagner Moura.
‘BACURAU’ (2019) will be on general release in the UK from March 13th 2020
It will also be available on MUBI from March 27th 2020. There will also be a preview at the BFI Southbank on March 6th 2020 with a Q&A with co-director Kleber Mendonça Filho
Written and directed by Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho
Production Saïd Ben Saïd / Emilie Lesclaux. Michel Merkt
DOP Pedro Sotero
Music Mateus Alves / Tomaz Alves Souza
Editor Eduardo Serrano
Cast Bárbara Colen, Sonia Braga, Thomas Aquino, Silvero Pereira, Udo Kier and Lia de Itamaracá as the unforgettable ‘Carmelita’.
