A Herdade

The Domain (A Herdade) is a movie about a rich landowner that lives in south bank of river Tagus, in the Alentejo region. This movie depicts the portuguese contemporany history from before 25 April Revolution, during the dictatoship government of Marcelo Caetano until 1991 in a democratic time. This movie centers in the character of João Fernandes played by Albano Jeronimo in one of his great performances and his relations with workers and relatives. The photograghy is also very well done with great landscapes, beutifully filmed.

A Film from the sixties in the XXI century. Obvious and endless...

Portuguese quality in its best. Great actors and plot.

In a country where there is little investment in culture, it is really amazing to see such an amazing portuguese work.

The actrors are impressive, the camera work brilliant and the photography stunning.

There are a lot of smart details that might not be obvious for the mainstream viewer but that I absolutely loved, like the motif of the horse (which decline reflects the familiy one) and that the moonlight in the night sequences always lights the person in power within the scene.

The only downside in my view is that if the viewer is not portuguese, it can have more difficulty understanding the historical context. However, this movie also deals with timeless issues like family, love, freedom and power.

The only good thing about the movie was the photography - great landscapes beautifully filmed. Terrible plot, terrible dialogues. Actors would stop in the middle of a sentence (probably trying to remember what comes next) and they just left it like that, instead of repeating the scene. The topic of the movie could be interesting but it was poorly developed. Smoking all the time, it was ridiculous.