Vazante

Very good portrait of the life of enslaved Africans (both their habits and their suffering) and the decaying slaver society in Brazil, shown in a perhaps too sluggish pace but with an amazing and careful sober low-contrast black & white cinematography (besides rich sounds which transport espectator to that farm in Minas Gerais). Many social issues are discussed as the actual background, such as impoverishment of small farmers, patriarchy, low-age marriage for girls, dark-skinned free workers who repressed black slaves, varied and naturalized violences against black enslaved people (including sexual one), African religion and languages, people considered as animals (what cinematography captures in many beautiful and strong scenes)... As director explained, slavery oppression is often portrayed in Hollywood as something made by psychopath individual minds, but that cruelty was much more systhemic, in the level of state, deep in the ground of society structure. Against most critiques, I agree with her and I believe she was able to sgow that. In the middle of the movie, film's focus narrows from a more general exploration to the passage from childhood to teenage of a white girl in that harsh environment. Probably it was not the most interesting among available stories she could have developed. Though, it was a valid one, anyway.

This is a slow rolling tsunami of a story that few will be able to fully appreciate, relate to, understand or even want to. It's obviously not for just anybody's senses or general sensibilities who have no relative interest or insights to what colonialism, slavery, suffrage and persecution looked and felt like in that era. Hard to imagine the domination of one human being over another's that's meant to build a pathway for a proper lifestyle to a higher existence while effectively dousing another human being's hope's and dreams of something similar.

This movie is laced with a cluster of nuances, and undercurrents of things unsaid, lost expectations, racism, white man's mentality and child lust. The world is full of wonderment in the eyes of youth, no matter their different circumstances. Yet loss plays a central part in this story from husband to widower and slave owner at the cost of many. You can feel their breath is palpable and inhaling things they can't fully comprehend like disillusionment, disconnectedness, fear, aloneness.

Vazante doesn't shout out at you nor does it whisper of things that can arrive to bend and break you. It's a sad, heartbreakingly provocative story that is still being explored, re-written and acted out badly in various ways everywhere.

Pacing, plotting, and storytelling clearly aren't this director's forte. I don't know what her forte is, but it's definitely not making watchable films. This travesty jumps around wildly from scene to scene, never letting you know if it's the same instant or weeks or months later. The characters' motivations are inscrutable and never explored, and what little information we do get is supplied through forced, clunky exposition between characters. Truly terrible.

The only positive is good photography. After that nothing is good. Very boring rhythm, the story jumps around and it does not explore anything deeply. Painful to watch.

Good photography. Good performances. Predictable script. Completely boring rhythm.