Volta à Terra (Return to Earth)

VOLTA À TERRA (Return to Earth)            B+                  

aka:  Be(Longing)

Portugal  (78 mi)  2014  d:  João Pedro Plácido         Official site                                        

Co-written, shot, and directed by João Pedro Plácido, a Lisbon-born director raised by his maternal grandparents who began shooting music videos at the age of 19, attending film school in both Lisbon and Germany, as he is fluent in five languages.  Most of his previous work has been as a documentary cinematographer, where this is his first venture as a director.   Perhaps as a tribute to his grandparents, who are originally from the region explored in northern Portugal, the life depicted hasn’t changed much through the centuries, with farmers raising cattle and living off the land, where rising early and capturing the ritual of their daily routines comprises the majority of this somewhat slight work.  By exploring the four seasons in the remote village of Uz, in many respects it treads on similar territory as Michelangelo Frammartino’s wordless Le Quattro Volte (The Four Times) (2010), where the cycle of life feels unchanged since Biblical times.  In modern day Portugal, most have left these rural havens to seek work in the cities, leaving the arduous work to the large families that actually have the manpower to perform all the necessary chores, where a good deal of the film is witnessing family members out in the fields plowing or harvesting their crops, offering a communal feel to their lives that resembles Dovzhenko’s EARTH (1930), especially the jovial talk that they provide, continually teasing one another, making jokes at someone else’s expense, all in good fun, where the older family members continually ridicule the laziness of youth, as they have it so much easier than previous generations.  What’s remarkable are scenes where workers toiling at their backbreaking farm work break out into song at a moment’s notice, perhaps playing to the camera, but it happens with regularity, with the men often choosing saucy songs, like the kind sailors might sing at sea.  In fact, there’s a good deal of profanity expressed, usually when something doesn’t go as it should, but they use it as comic relief, where there’s a surprising amount of humor involved in just getting through each day.  One might attribute this to being a close-knit family, where they meet regularly over meals, where joking with one another is what comprises the dinner conversation.

Most of the film focuses upon Daniel (Daniel Xavier Pereira), at twenty-one, one of the youngest members to pull his own weight out in the fields, who dropped out of school in the 9th grade to help work on his family farm, where we see him at the crack of dawn, with fog still lingering in the air, as he lets the cattle out of their stables and leads them down a rocky pathway, up a few stairs, and out into the rolling hills where they can graze all day on fresh grass.  Calling each by name, swearing profusely when they ignore him, he is a modern day shepherd that spends his days tending to a prime herd of cattle while lost to his own dreams and ambition.  The film offers a mix of rural solidarity within a strong family unit that must work together to survive, but also moments of solitude, where the presence of the land is paramount.  Daniel jokes about an aging bull that finds it more difficult to procreate, claiming it needs some Viagra while being teased relentlessly about how he needs to offer a helping hand.  Part of what attracts the filmmaker’s interest is the eccentricities of the elders, who develop their own habits, where one interestingly walks to one of the town’s celebratory festivities with a scythe still in his hand.  One of the more amusing scenes features Daniel attempting to communicate with a young French boy, where they seem to do nicely by speaking only their own languages, where the young kid is not in the least persuaded to learn Portuguese.  While there are scenes of gathering wheat, tying them into stalks, there are also sheep that are individually sheared by hand, while a gigantic pig is butchered into various sized cuts of meat, where nothing seems to go to waste.  As they work, pulling a stalled tractor out of the mud, people from town can be seen standing around the road shooting pictures of them, where a centuries-old tradition collides with the modern era, as if farmers have become an endangered species.   It appears the village was founded about 700 or 800 years ago, but the population has dwindled recently, with a current population of under 100 residents, where one farmer can be heard lamenting, “Those that work the most, earn the least.”    

The film is surprisingly more upbeat than one might think, filled with jovial moments, none more electrifying than the annual village festival, where Daniel encounters an attractive former classmate (Daniela Barrosa) now living in a neighboring town, where they hang out together, walking in a candle-lit church procession, each carrying their own candle, where Daniel can’t remember the words to the songs, as it’s been so long since he’s been to mass.  She reminds him that it’s like riding a bike, sarcastically telling him “You’re the man, Daniel” when he remains clueless, continuing into the church service where he noticeably sings off-key.  But he’s cool with it, even if she’s embarrassed, where there is music and dancing afterwards, with old people sitting on the sidelines gossiping, followed by an extremely loud fireworks display.  He, of course, hears about it from his family the next day, where he constantly takes a ribbing from his elders who are curious if he feels strongly enough to run off with her to live in her town.  Suffice it to say, Daniel is happy where he is, where he’s in line to inherit a sizeable piece of the farm, and he obviously enjoys the way of life that he’s grown accustomed to.  As he takes the cattle out into the fields the next day, he pulls out a cellphone and calls his sweetheart, but she has no real interest in becoming a farm girl, leaving him to wonder about what might have been.  Realizing potential wives are scarce, Daniel tries to save face by indicating he might have to seek a bride over the Internet, perhaps from China or Brazil.  But as the summer winds fade, the season’s change, where a female cow gives birth, where the stable is full of young calves, offering hope for the future as the winter snow settles in.  While ostensibly a documentary on the unchanging landscape in a constantly changing world, it’s also a coming-of-age story rooted in family traditions while also being influenced by the luxuries and temptations swirling all around from a more contemporary urban life. 

Le Quattro Volte (The Four Times)

LE QUATTRO VOLTE (The Four Times)                   B+                  

Italy  (88 mi)  2010  d:  Michelangelo Frammartino

This is cinema of the sublime, a rare instance where it’s near impossible not to be amused and enchanted by a director’s vision and imagination.  A few years back there was a festival film called HUKKLE (2002), a near wordless film from Hungary that drew many admirers for its unusual format, basically telling a story with few words.  This does the same, only there are no words whatsoever and there’s little, if any, storyline.  Instead there’s a series of images shown in a documentary manner, though one wonders if it even fits the documentary format.  First and foremost, the film is utterly gorgeous, shot by Andrea Locatelli in Calabria, Italy, easily the most beautiful film seen so far this year where the focus of attention is the verdant green rolling hills where a herd of goats grazes in a natural state of grace.  This is Bresson’s Balthazar (1966) without the Sisyphus-like series of human horrors that follows its short lifespan on earth.  These goats already live in their own paradise, free from any human interference save for the constant barking of herder dogs and the worn out footsteps of an aging shepherd who has a hard time keeping up anymore, who has to continually stop and rest along the way, where amusingly, and politely, the goats wait for him to sit down before they rush ahead along the narrow pathway through the woods.  The goats themselves are natural scene stealers, as these are among the healthiest goats ever to grace the screen and they frolic and freely jump onto anything they can climb, showing a rare exuberance in the wild, where the constant bleating has a calming effect.  But it’s the beauty of their environment that holds the key to this film, as that ultimately is the film’s subject.  The goats are simply non-professional actors willing to work cheaply, adding their own unadulterated realism to every shot, shown using long, extended takes and natural sound.

As he herds the goats back home where they spend the night in a gated pen, the shepherd visits the church where he picks up a package of dust collected from the floors of the altars, which he places in his water at night as his medicine.  Come morning, there is a rooftop shot overlooking the goats laying in their outdoor pen as a truck pulls up and parks nearby, as the occupants disappear and slowly a procession passes down the street, where afterwards a poor girl is penned in by the herder dog that continually prevents her from passing, an amusing game between man and beast that idly passes the time until the girl is finally left unimpeded.  The dog is more interested in kicking the rock out from underneath the truck’s tire, causing a near catastrophe in the making.  But the camera amazingly swings away in the opposite direction as the viewer can only imagine what happened, an interesting diversion before swinging back and showing a truck that rolled downhill backwards through the goat’s pen, as they are now milling around the street like curious bystanders.  This is a particularly humorous sequence as interior shots show goats bounding up the stairs, some standing on tabletops, others just bunched together around the poor shepherd who never made it through the night.  As the villagers carry his casket and lay it to rest, one can still hear a heartbeat which is quickly segued by a newborn goat falling out of his mother’s amniotic sac, dropping to the ground where it remains squashed on its knees until it can gather enough strength to stand.  This gorgeous white kid goat becomes the focus of the camera’s attention, seen in various stages with other goats, both adult and baby goats, where their interaction couldn’t be more human, as the babies are cleverly mischievous at play and can’t wait for their mothers to return when left alone in a cleanly swept barn all day. 

One of the most transcendental shots is following this white kid goat as it passes through the mountainside hills and gullies with the bigger goats, but gets stuck in a dry gulch that the others easily cross, losing contact with the herd.  With utter effortlessness, the vulnerability of the goat is exposed by its unanswered bleats, a heartbreaking moment that may be the shot of the film as after wandering aimlessly all day he finally lays to rest at night beside a giant tree.  After a quick series of shots that hold the same image affixed during changing seasons, the focus is shifted to the tree, which becomes the subject of the annual Spring Tree Festival.  In a visualized pageantry, dozens of villagers are seen climbing and surrounding the tree in an attempt to harvest it, a largely symbolic gesture that signifies the season for harvesting and the gathering of wood for fuel.  Later more trees are subsequently reduced to ordinary sized firewood that is charred in a hand built smoker.  This ancient ritual is a painstakingly deliberate process of building the hut out of sticks and mud, then slowly packing and drying the mud until it can withstand heat, adding smoke holes for ventilation, transformed into a giant smoker that turns the wood into usable charcoal, which is later distributed throughout the village.  This is a beautifully edited, naturalistic, cycle of life film that inventively keeps changing the focus of the film, using plenty of wry humor and exquisite imagery that connects one section to the next, always finding involving footage that shows ageless wisdom and maturity behind the camera.  This is extremely enjoyable filmmaking, highly original and compelling throughout.  While the cyclical nature is a story in itself, it’s the beauty of the landscapes, the rooftop overviews, and the inventive compositions that continue to delight the viewer, as it’s easy to become transfixed by the near Biblical austerity of a timeless place that continues to exist in the present much as it has for centuries.