Ocaso

"Ocaso" is a beautiful first work that only runs 78 minutes, that works well for the strength of its images. Brazilian director Geraldo Sarno often refers with certainty to the corporealness of images that can bewitnessed in several young filmmakers' works. In their films the new creators sustain their images for more than the regular duration of shots in a mainstream movie. The images of objects and persons attain a new dimension, a different perception. These images have lost their brightness or beauty, perhaps from the routine of watching them on a daily basis. These new works (that some call "slow cinema", while they are better described as observational cinema) regain the original brightness of images. Théo Court belongs to that generation of filmmakers. In "Ocaso", the characters' bodies, their actions and the dilapidated country mansion where they live, come to new life in the midst of decay, framed by vigorous nature, almost ethereal in its stillness and splendor. Easily taken for a documentary, the drama unfolds with calm, but it does take from documentary perception in the attitude of director Court, cinematographer Mauro Herce, and editor Manuel Munoz, respectful of the anthropological perspective of the characters' actions. In the minimalist story, an old butler faces the possibility of unemployment and homelessness, while time passes serenely but inexorably, and archive images evoke the happy days, lost in the memory, crystallized in fragments of monochromatic celluloid. A small work, but huge in its achievement, "Ocaso" is a firm step in Théo Court's evolution as a filmmaker.