Bacurau

One of my faves of the past year. Literally have nothing bad or negative to say about it. So I'll keep this one short.

I was in a mood to see a western aft watching too many horror movies. This movie's name cropped up. I saw this without checking the trailer and without reading any thing bah it. What a pleasant surprise i got. I am generous with a 9 cos i enjoyed this. Simple, aint no wannabe critic. The film moves at a slow pace without getting bore. It has lots of twists n turns n some wierd stuff. People roaming naked, people taking bath openly, etc. The showdown in the end is amazingly done n Western fans will definitely enjoy it. The cinematography is awesome.

The plot without any spoilers - A village consisting of very few close knitted people and suffering from severe water shortage experiences a series of unusual events after the arrival of two tourist bikers. The entire village's mobile signal goes down, the village's name n location suddenly disappears from online maps, a flying drone is seen hovering above n horses from nearby farm are set loose.

Bacurau embraces so many strong topics: the endemic violence in Brazil, the gun culture and god complex of the US, social gap, political corruption, historical resistance of Nordeste (Brazil's Northeast region) and the "complexo de vira-lata" (inferiority complex) of the people by their own country. These are all packed in a mystery/thriller/western entertaining film set in the Sertão. It's already a classic and an important addition to Brazilian contemporary cinema.

Perhaps the most recent entry of weird western genre, this is a wild ride form start to finish. imagine mixing Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns with science fiction, horror and disturbing scenes, psychedelic drugs, Udo kier as a former nazi with his squad of savage american-eoropean villains and cultural themes of a local brazillian village and the result is Bacurau.

Written and directed by Kleber Mendonca, an acclaimed brazillian filmmaker, Bacurau is a roller-coaster of a film. It manages somehow to be both 1. reminiscent of Jodorowsky's surrealists westerns and 2. a very modern social commentary film about foreign invasion and colonialism. You may or may not like this film, but you will surely appreciate it's accomplishments.

Easily the strangest film I saw in 2020. The Brazilian actors feel so genuine and legit, and all the American actors are the polar opposite: Cinemax caliber acting. The juxtaposition between the two is really off-putting, but it's one of the things that gives this strange movie it's own identity. Somehow it feels like there is some sort of symbolic parallel with the weird drone UFO that you see very early in the film. At first when you see it, you think "they can't really expect us to accept how cheap looking this thing is, can they?", but it turns out it was a conscious decision and served a purpose. I have to wonder if the production team purposefully did the same thing when they cast the American actors - I wouldn't doubt it, but I can't determine why they would metaphorically.

Bacurau is not exactly a super enjoyable film to watch, but it's a very intriguing experience with a unique tone of it's own. It's rather grim overall - almost completely humorless, but there's accomplishment in that. There is plentiful violence, as it is one of the main themes of the film. I enjoyed the music throughout the film, as disjointed as it felt - the John Carpenter song felt totally out of place, but as a big fan of it, I enjoyed it anyhow. The Geraldo Vandre song is the one that stands out the most - sounds like a Spanish King Crimson - it's great! Udo Kier was also a nice addition to an otherwise unknown cast - total legend - always equally creepy and enjoyable.

I wouldn't recommend this to the average person, but if someone asked me about it and they were curious, I would definitely tell them it's good. I'd be curious to see what this director would choose to do with a higher budget. Time for me to read up on them a bit...