Quiet
Revelations
by Howard Schumann
Twelve-year-old
Mauro (Michel Joelsas) is a soccer fan who spends hours playing table
soccer in his suburban home in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and fantasizes
about playing soccer with Pelé and Tostao, the heroes of the
Brazilian soccer team that is about to compete for its third World Cup
title. He hardly even blinks when his parents tell him that they are
going on vacation and will be dropping him off at his grandfather’s
apartment in Sao Paolo.
Brazil’s
official submission for the 2008 Oscars in the Best Foreign Film category,
The Year My Parents Went on Vacation contains
all the ingredients for a Hollywood-style exercise in cliché-ridden
sentimentality – an adorable young boy, a cantankerous but wise
old man, and a world-class sports tournament. Yet director Cao Hamburger
meshes these elements into a film that is nuanced, honest, and genuinely
touching and, in the process, shows how an attitude of welcoming hospitality
can make a difference in the lives of those who feel abandoned.
The
story is set in Brazil in 1970 against a backdrop of military dictatorship.
Mauro's father (Eduardo Moreira) and Catholic mother (Simone Spoladore)
have been forced to go underground because of their political opposition
to the dictatorship of General Emilio Medici, but do not reveal to Mauro
the truth about their leaving. Telling the boy that they will come back
for him before the start of the World Cup Soccer Tournament, they deliver
him to the home of his grandfather Motel (Paulo Autran) in the mostly
Jewish Bom Retiro district of Sao Paulo, but do not realize that grandpa
has just died of a heart attack in his barbershop.
Tired of waiting
for his grandfather to return, Mauro enlists the help of a neighbor,
an aging Jewish bachelor Shlomo (Germano Haiut) who reluctantly takes
him in but is not happy with his newfound task of caring for the youngster.
He chastises the boy after he rejects eating herring for breakfast and
slaps him across the face when he plays soccer in the hallways while
wearing his prayer shawl. Shlomo becomes even more petulant when he
inadvertently discovers that Mauro (whom he has been calling Moishela)
is a “goy” who has not been circumcised (a very unlikely
event when there is a Jewish father). It is only when the rabbi tells
him that, like Moses, Mauro has been left on his doorstep by God that
he begins to treat Moishela with respect and invites members of the
local synagogue to offer him lunch each day at their different apartments.
Mauro’s
love of soccer helps him to befriend the local Jewish children, forming
a bond with adorable 11-year-old Hanna (Daniela Piepsyk) and the community
of Italian, Greek and Arab immigrants who are united in their devotion
to the Brazilian soccer team. Joelsas is excellent as the highly intelligent
and energetic boy who must adapt to a strange environment far removed
from his familiar surroundings. The film is almost stolen, however,
by Piepsyk as the tomboyish Hanna, who collects money from the boys
to give them a peek at women trying on clothes in her mother’s
dress shop. When the World Cup begins, however, all the attention in
the neighborhood is on soccer. But for Mauro, it is mostly a reminder
of his parents' promise to return.
Spoken mostly in Yiddish, The Year My Parents Went on Vacation
contains elements of The Cup, Running
on Empty, and Under the Same Moon, but distinguishes
itself by the freshness of its light-hearted approach and the outstanding
performances of its mostly non-professional actors. Though it's not
primarily a political coming-of-age film, when Hamburger deftly shifts
from a rock n’ roll dance floor to the sound of fascist soldiers
on horseback making arrests of suspected dissidents, it is a jarring
introduction to a young man’s loss of innocence.
Set
in the austere Mennonite community of northern Mexico, Carlos Reygadas'
Silent Light is not about suffering and sin
but about the enormous power of compassion and what it takes to be truly
alive. Filmed in consultation with the Mennonites, a Christian sect
of European descent who speak Plautdietsch, a German dialect, the film
is paced very slowly, almost excruciatingly so, but its meditative pace
allows those with patience to enter the interior lives of the characters
in a way that is normally not possible in cinema. With outstanding performances
by non-professional actors reminiscent of works by Bresson and Tarkovsky,
the film’s physical beauty brings poetry to ordinary events such
as machines harvesting crops, the milking of cows, and the faces of
children having their hair shampooed.
Johan (Cornelio
Wall), a father of five young children, is involved in a love triangle
that has made him remorseful and uncertain of God’s approval.
Torn between his wife Esther (Miriam Toews) and his lover Marianne (Maria
Pankratz), he openly confesses his adulterous behavior to his wife as
he entertains thoughts of abandoning his family. In obvious pain, Johan
sits alone at the kitchen table and weeps after Esther and the children
have gone out following the morning ritual of breakfast and silent prayer,
but his remorse does not prevent him from continuing to meet and have
sex with Marianne. After Johan goes to a garage to pick up a crankshaft
for his tractor, he tells his friend Zacarius (Jacobo Klassen) about
his affair. Then, when a familiar song comes on the radio, he turns
up the volume and sings along in an outburst of sudden joy while driving
his truck in circles.
Later,
he stops by his parent's farm to tell his father about his affair, explaining
that he has told Esther about Marianne. His father, a preacher, hints
that the devil may be responsible, but also admits that he once also
had an affair with a woman other than his mother. In one of the warmest
scenes of the film, Johan and Esther take the children bathing in a
nearby pond, a gesture of love that makes his infidelity all the harder
for Esther to bear.
A long
and quiet film, Silent Light touches on some profound themes
but keeps its emotional distance. Because there is little emphasis on
religious beliefs or the real nature of his emotional and spiritual
crisis, the film’s final homage to Carl Dreyer is not placed in
a context where it can achieve either radiance or power, and comes off
as a second hand copy. Yet although Silent Light doesn’t
quite overcome its inertia and reach the heights, its visual beauty
is consoling and at times overwhelming. An exquisite six-minute tracking
shot frames the film, an opening and closing sequence that attempts
to connect our mundane lives to the ineffable beauty of the universe.
As the illuminated stars slowly give way to sunlight and we are caressed
by the ambient sounds of nature, we sense the light slowly beginning
to illuminate our planet as we move into a new age, long forecasted
in Hopi and Mayan tradition.
©2008 Howard Schumann
CineScene
