Arábia

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.

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.

Very cute, I love these independent films, the day to day, the raw exposed routine, a sincere portrait, a slow pace, but nothing that negatively impacts, a simple script, well executed, nothing grand, but sensitive and poetic, sad , beautiful, full of stories... And the choice of soundtrack, stupendous, makes it hurt, the testimonials are so real and vivid...

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.

An incredibly beautiful and contemplative reflection about life, a life - how its unpredictable nature, with the consequences of the cards we're dealt, with the choices we make, takes us to places we could never have imagined or anticipated and the people we meet on that journey. Art, poetry and cinema conjoined, this is a film from Brazil that will remain with you for as long as you care to remember but well worth revisiting if you start to forget, for no other reason than to remind you how you got here and to where you might be going.