Reise an den Anfang der Welt

And very sentimental. An old movie director travels with his crew through the north of Portugal to take a famous French actor to the old village where his aunt still lives (his Portuguese father's sister). He was born in France whereto his father had emigrated and this is his first travel to Portugal. He is anxious to meet his aunt who he had never seen. We see something of the beautiful landscape of the rural northern Portugal and and people's life there. The characters are well defined and we can feel the deep psychological atmosphere of dialogues and acting.A moving and almost pathetic movie.

Subtle, nostalgic, lyrical poem about memory, death, images of a lost world and origins. A film about love as shadow of existence, about the small traces who gives sense of days and years, about nuances of past and the looks of recollections. It is the last movie of Mastroianni and this fact is a form of nimbus for all film. It is testimony of a splendid art to build a character, to polish his soul, to create the outline of ordinary miracles. It is a film about profound Portugal. About national roots in a huge Europe, about the power and the pressure of words and search. Bits of fado and dust of illusions. A travel to the sense of universe and a transformation of a actor. Some memories, some words in the language of father and a statue. The bones of a life and its trickle.

I must say that this film, made by the most prestigious portuguese director (Manoel de Oliveira), is a great reflexion about Portugal's more typical feelings and about life in general. It has in it the symbols of many things like the hard work shown by Pedro Macau, the statue. It is also a way to show the beautiful landscape (at least a sample of it) that my country has... It is important to notice the past of Afonso, the son of a portuguese emigrant in France, which is very common in Portugal (there are about 750 000 portuguese emigrants in France) and the recent portuguese history told by the country old woman. It's a grace to watch to this touching movie. In it Marcello Mastroianni says Goodbye to cinema... and to life. He did the best way, I must say. This peace of art proves at least two things... Poetry can be written through images, and the portuguese people have poetry on its spirit; Oliveira with his now 93 years old proved it... Behold a master piece!...

A road-trip pans out like an impromptu documentary, four passengers, Manoel (Mastroianni), an aging film director, two actors, Afonso (Gautier) and Judite (Silveira), plus the assistant Duarte (Dória), roving around a rural Portugal in a minivan. This is Portugal's national treasure Manoel de Oliveira's VOYAGE TO THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD, made when he was 89-year-old young.

Sentiment prevails inexorably because this film is Marcello Mastroianni's swan song, posthumously released one year after his departure at the age of 72, instantaneously, his image, a stooped old man, assisted by a walking stick, can breach a cinephile's defense line and allow one to pour out oceanic compassion to an indwelt screen icon with an inward wail. Yet, Mastroianni isn't playing himself, he is the avatar of Mr. de Oliveira, therefore, his self-reflection on youth, senility and life itself, can be ambivalently stemmed from either Marcello or Manoel through their amassed life philosophy (notably, the poem of Pa.

But the trip's de facto goal, is to set up a belatedly first meeting between Afonso and his paternal auntie Maria Afonso (de Castro). Born and raised entirely in France, and unequipped with his progenitor's mother tongue, Afonso embarks on the journey of discovering his biological root, to the place where his deceased father was born, with both trepidation and excitement. Here, countering the film's prior conversation-piece laden perambulation, Manoel leavens the drama with concentrated efficacy through Maria Afonso's initial cynical grumble (the legendary Portuguese actress Isabel de Castro furnishes the close-ups with searing potency), only to be thawed by an underlined consanguineous relation that transcends all the words.

Spasmodically enhancing the vignettes (often in the tailgate shots facing the road they have merely traversed) is an eerie, eclectic soundscape confected by Emmanuel Nuñes, ranging from jangling to surreal, VOYAGE TO THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD, like its title indicates, is a humane travelogue to a corner on the earth which is largely forgotten by the rest of the world, as if time freezes, the beginning remains to be disinterred.

The title echoes Jules Verne and suggests science fiction, and this is exactly what we get as two filmmakers with very different backgrounds explore their Portuguese past with friends. There are no special effects or gimmicks, just actors and a car, but throughout we sense an entry into another dimension - by simply placing his camera in the back of a car, de Oliveira conflates past, present, future as our heroes go time travelling, journeying into a landscape alien and forgotten, another dimension guarded by a totem carrier, and encompassing history, mythology, literature and folklore.

JOURNEY has many themes - the past, cinema, politics, modernity and tradition - but it is really about the difference between banal objectivity and magical subjectivity. For fans of Chris Marker and VERTIGO especially, take this adventure with only de Oliveira's irony to guide you.