Arábia

I sat down to watch this film at a film festival a while back without any expectations. It started off very low-key and the tone remains so throughout but narratively it builds and builds into an epic mosaic of working class Brazil. One of the most quietly political films I've seen and so much more powerful as a result of that quietness. Charming, funny, angry and tragic, this film has stuck with me for a long time and I don't think I'll forget the experience.

"I'm like everyone else. It's just my life that was a little bit different." Cristiano (Aristides de Sousa)

As a road ramble and self-discovery story, Araby, set in Brazil, is more unassuming than most others. In fact it is nothing like the robust Motorcycle Diaries or Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001); it rather is a simple tale from a factory worker Cristiano's (Aristides de Sousa) notebook that tells of small adventures and small defeats, all in the name of trying to find himself in the daily grind of working for the man.

Truth be told, his story is "a little bit different" but not by much. Araby has a lyric beauty in its simplicity, a reverence for the small things of life like riding a bicycle or briefly falling in love, with dreams of having a child, a seeming impossibility in such poverty. This almost randomly episodic tale, told in voice-over by Cristiano as young Andre (Murilo Caliari) reads Cristiano's notes, holds secrets about a young man's dreams and not so subtle opinions about the dead end of factory work.

In fact, the meta theme of owners exploiting workers has more prominence than it seems because of its low key appearance in a few words and images of Cristiano toiling amidst the hellish flames of the steel factory, where a good black worker can be fired or a competent Latino can become dispirited just by the work.

As Cristiano says, this is" the story of how I stood up for myself." That insight is worth watching in a road picture like few others.

Saw this at the Rotterdam film festival (iffr.com) 2017, where it was part of the Tiger Competition. Similar to 2016, again the nominations for the Tiger Award were confined to only eight movies, so being part of the happy few rises expectations. The movie itself has the format of a road movie, but that would be a misnomer. Actually we see an endless series of jobs, places, people he met or worked with, and so on and so forth. There is no development of any kind, just a seemingly infinite sequence. It portrays the lives of the workers there and their low-end jobs with low (or none, sometimes) payment. Everything is centered around one man: Christiano, who wrote it all down in a diary for 20 years.

The net result is mildly interesting because of the variety in locations, work places and situations. There were a few pivotal moments, however, for example when people talked about the late Bareet (sp?) who was good in organizing workers into a strike and thus successfully forced better payments. A second example was his short relationship with Ana, that prematurely ended but continued on a distance by exchanging letters. But that is all there is. I wrongly assumed beforehand that the diary would expose the dangers faced by workers in the factory, causing the hospitalization of Christiana that we see in the opening scene. But there was no such indictment against employers, although we see ample instances where laborers do have to work in questionable circumstances.

The movie borders on boring due to the very calm passage of scenes, yet keeps you awake for the complete running time because of the diversity of said scenes. Each on itself was powerful enough to stand on its own feet and to make clear what was going on. The role of young man Andre is minimal, and only important in the first 10 minutes when he is sent to collect some clothes and an ID after Christiano is hospitalized, in whose house he finds a diary spanning 30 years. From that moment on, the story rewinds to the moment when Christiano started to take notes. The story is told by a voice-over intermixed with played fragments, all of which feature Christiano but each time having other co-players and a different location as tapestry.

The Brazilian film Arábia (2017) was shown in the U.S. with the translated title Araby. The movie was co-written and co-directed by João Dumans and Affonso Uchoa.

The film stars Aristides de Sousa as Cristiano, a working class man who has to settle for jobs involving unskilled labor. He travels down the road, always looking for a better job and a better life.

This film had some real strengths. It demonstrated the fate of an unskilled laborer who can never find a job has any meaning or gives him any satisfaction. de Sousa is a fine actor, and he makes his role come alive.

I found the movie discouraging, because Cristiano never attempts to improve his situation in any way. He talks about how his father organized a strike among fruit pickers, but he himself doesn't organize. He's likable enough, and he makes friends, but when he move on, he leaves them behind.

A previous reviewer called this a "A movie about hope," but I would call it "A movie without hope."

We saw this film at Rochester's wonderful Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman Museum. It was part of the excellent Rochester Labor Film Series. It will work well on the small screen.

I just saw this film yesterday in Lisbon, where it had won the Jury Prize at Indielisboa. I knew nothing about it except for the fact it was Brazilian, and I had lived in Brazil for eight years, so went to see it with my Brazilian partner. We both loved it. It was a extremely sad film overall but had moments of great humour and of great tenderness. Some people have criticized it for not being "political" enough but it was all the more moving for focusing on the personal rather than on slogans. For those of us who know Brazil it comes over as really authentic. The dialogue is spot-on. Recommended for anyone who likes thoughtful cinema.