L'âge de la Terre

"A idade da terra" is both suggestive and abstract. It stimulates a divine satisfaction, its rewarding but overly unstructured, annoyingly insane, and punishingly long. The film presents a whole state of mind, a mind that believe in the greatness of religion, its supreme purposes, to bring hope, meaning, answer's, strive. The worship of a superhuman controlling power, a personal kingdom of god within every man. If religion never existed: the Pyramids would never exist, world history would never exist. All the grandest achievements of mankind would cease from the earths surface. If religion didn't exist everything would change. Countries, languages, fashion, politics. Religion was what gave revolution for the renaissance. Religion gave birth to science. Its the source of morality, thy what is good, thy what is evil. Religion is the best placebo. The very idea of a miracle gives people hope, when acceptance gives death. It shows christ in a underdeveloped but modern part of the "Third World" . Christ - a primitive phenomenon in a very primitive, very new civilisation.

Rocha's last film is a culmination of his avant-garde cinematic language, portraying Brazil in a series of scenes, painting a cinematographic postcard of the country with a barrage of dances, parties, songs, theatrics, discussions and speeches on Brazil's history and politics, religious scenes, with passionate actors as society's archetypes. Bizarre performances in a world of war and peace. Freedom and slavery. A world of Black man, white man. Devil and God. The new world, the old world. Glauber sees the world changing as its core of the wretched Earth shrivels into darkness, he knows the world must evolve for if it did not it would become dust. Possessed by a demon - his heart screams, his vocal chords hum. If only it were the reverse. "A Idade da terra" = The last warcry from a revolutionary director.

What is the use of a message if it is transmitted so that it will turn away most people? When did cinema stop being also about entertaining? If I make a movie, especially one with a strong message, I want it to be watched by as many people as possible. Otherwise, what is the point in making it? I could/should write a book instead. If Glauber Rocha really thought his movies would change people's cinematic taste, he was wrong. Aesthetics, good acting, good dialogues, etc., are still (and I think will always be) important. Rocha is not a cinema genius. He is the opposite. A cinema genius combines all elements of a movie to make it interesting and memorable on many levels, not only one (the message). Ingmar Bergman anyone? I think Rocha was just a crazy guy without talent, but with a political message, who thought he could/should make movies.

Glauber Rocha was once-upon-a-time a very famous man. A key figure in world cinema. Friends with Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Marie Straub, an influence on film-makers as diverse as Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Amos Gitai and countless other film-makers. Today he's practically forgotten by most. His films rarely mounted as a retrospective, inspiring few articles on his rich and complex filmography.

What does it mean to be a fiercely provocative and openly formal film-maker of the "Third World". Most films from this vaguely defined economic sector of the planet that find a Western audience cater to the paternalism of the world hegemony, excorcise liberal guilt and work in schemas every bit as conventional as the worst sitcoms. With Rocha, you get fierce, cutting, vital celebrations of folk poetry, hymns to the landscape of the country that he loves so very much and a challenge to conventional film-making in Brazil and the rest of the world. His career as a film-maker suffered from problems of funding, common enough, and even moreso from the fact that his country underwent a collapse of its democracy which was replaced with a military dictatorship. This led to exile, a stint working underground and in short films.

This context makes THE AGE OF THE EARTH(A IDADE DA TERRA) all the more remarkable for its very existence. It is shot in CinemaScope, 35mm and was expensive and ambitious. It was his last film, he died shortly afterwards and it's perfectly clear from the stunning first take(no titles opening and credits) that he isn't going gently into the night. He's playing for keeps and taking no prisoners. The film's length of 2 and a half hours befits it's truly epic length.

Rocha's style of film-making challenged conventional film-making norms in a way that was totally unique. By no means a minimalist, he created a bold intense style of film-making that featured rich, saturated, loud soundtracks with eclectic music arrangements(cf, the opening of TERRA EM TRANSE) mixed with a tight emphasis on framing and long takes mixed with some of the most intense montage since Sergei Eisenstein's death. Stories matter even less in Rocha than they do in Godard. It's focus is in sculpting a particular vision of landscape, of folk rhythms and rituals.

THE AGE OF THE EARTH begins with a long tracking shot of the sun rising on the President's Palace in Brazil, slowly stretching back, recording the prism effects caused by the reflection of the sun on the lens and then a sharp cut to a rolling sphere("Action" yells Glauber offscreen) and then a frightening close-up on a very ugly mouth that yells, "My mission is to destroy this small, poor, planet earth!" The film then proceeds to a series of episodes that have vague relations to each other(it has been suggested that this film was constructed so that it could be played in any order of reels) yet at the finish of the runtime(there is no end to this picture) it constitutes a clear whole as Rocha creates a testament of his anxieties, fears and mystical visions regarding Brazil - it's various Christs and Satans, the omipresence of Western capitalist interests and a direct statement of Glauber's own political philosophy in his own write and voice.

I watched the Brazilian film "A Idade da Terra" by Glaube Rocha, from 1980 .The film begins five-minute staff of the rising sun, with the Brazilian, indigenous music. The following are alternate shots of contrasts of light and darkness, music, songs and dances, colorful costumes , which remindes me of the famous Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Alternate story about the end of the world, with tales of revolutions in the world, the independence of all countries, the totality of U.S. policy. Less knowledge about the historical and social conditions in Brazil ,hinder me in understanding some parts of the film, especially when it comes to associations with some political leaders and political events in Brazil, and the entire film I experienced as a theatrical performance. I can not say I understand it well enough, just hints of something about which I do not have enough knowledge and information.

"This film is a portrait of Brazil and of myself", stated director Glauber Rocha about his final film "A Idade da Terra", in an interview shortly before his sudden death in 1981, at 42, of pneumonia. "Idade..." is his grand epitaph: here you'll find the best and worst of Glauber's exuberant, allegoric, compulsive, revolutionary, verbose, ambitious and very individual style. There is no story-line: it's a collage of long scenes (mostly improvised) with the purpose of "reinventing Brazilian cinematic art, in the same way Villa-Lobos did with Brazilian music, Portinari and Di Cavalcanti did with Brazilian painting". Some have called it an "anti-symphony", where cinematic "noise" and "cacophony" would be part of a revolutionary artistic style. He was outraged by the fact that mainstream cinema still followed 19th-century literary paradigms (the predominance of dialog, narrative and plot over formal experiments) and wanted the movies to "finally enter the 20th century", to be as ground- breaking as the modernist painting movements. Glauber's original project for "Idade..." included having the 16 reels of the film being presented at random order, at the discretion of each projectionist in each movie session, never actually put into practice (the copy we see in VHS today is in the same order he screened at the Venice Film Festival).

"Idade..." had a long troubled genesis, as it began in 1978 and was only finalized two years later. Glauber was at the time a walking paradox: he was Brazil's most prestigious filmmaker on an international level, admired by Bertolucci, Godard and Buñuel; he had revolutionized Brazilian cinema at 24 y.old with his 2nd feature "Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol" (1964) becoming the leader of the Brazilian New Wave ("Cinema Novo"), creating a whole new aesthetics for third- world cinema, consolidated in his famous manifesto "Estética da Fome" (The Hunger Aesthetics). He had won two big prizes at Cannes (best director in 1969 for "Antonio das Mortes", and the Jury Prize for his 1977 iconoclast short "Di Cavalcanti"). And yet, by 1978 he was completely broke: he couldn't get financing, as his films were highly controversial and commercially unsuccessful. By then, he was in the habit of verbally attacking film critics and powerful media corporations, which didn't help matters. He was also living a private hell, as he -- a militant leftist -- was shunned by a league of important artists and intellectuals for expressing "sympathy" for the military regime in a 1975 controversial interview, as well as for hailing the new Pope (John Paul II), and was thought to be mentally disturbed. Still, he managed to raise enough money to buy a good amount of film stock and began shooting frantically with a shoe-string budget (he filmed a total of 36 hours, which he reluctantly reduced to the final version of 140 minutes).

Urgency is the key word here: it's as if he prophetically sensed this would be his last film. Glauber points his intellectual machine-gun at a multitude of themes: capitalism, militarism, imperialism, revolutionarism, Marxism, racism, sexism, religion and religious myths, pollution, the bourgeoisie, politicians, etc. Visually, the film has tints of cinéma-vérité (in the crowd scenes), expressionism (the 15-minute opening sequence representing the massacre of native indigenous peoples) and cubism (in some sequences, ALL the takes are included one after the other). Glauber's idea of acting was measured in decibels: not only the actors shout all the time, but he himself yells directions off-screen at the actors with his booming voice ("Fala mais alto, Danuza!!!").

"Idade…" is one of the last films to "believe" in avant-garde, experimental, uncompromising art films (as opposed to the omnipresent sense of commercialism we witness today, even from beginning filmmakers). It's from the days when films with political statements and philosophical discussions were welcome and relevant, when intellectual complexity was a plus and not "boring stuff". "Idade..." doesn't strive to be coherent, logical, accessible, entertaining: Glauber wants to provoke bewilderment and discomfort – and he certainly succeeds. It's a film of excesses: it's overlong, overly repetitive, overly digressive. It's a loud film from a loud man who didn't believe in subtlety. Glauber didn't even bother to write down his voice-over comments in "Idade...": he goes on and on ad libbing, thinking out loud in messianic speeches that are alternately lucid and maddeningly over the top. His famous inability to be succinct – both in films and real life – pays a price in his last film and it's no wonder that, by the end of the movie, we feel exhausted.

This is a film for audiences not afraid of experimentalism and controversy -- it's mandatory viewing for all interested in Glauber Rocha and as perhaps the last breath of Brazilian "Cinema Novo" movement. DO NOT watch this if you like conventional story-telling, clarity and subtlety. For the curious, open-minded, patient viewer, trust me: you've never seen a film quite like this.