Review by daniel_cms

O Principio da Incerteza is a film that, probably, most people will not understand, nor appreciate. It is no more and no less then art, and, thus, it is no more, and no less, then life. To achieve a proper explanation of what this film is, or of what it is about, it would be necessary to understand the nature of cinema itself as form of art.

The plot is quite interesting, as it is also the idea contained by the film. In fact, in the beginning of the story we are given what seem to be very marked and strongly defined characters. For instance it is immediately noticeable the attempt to associate some characters with their contrasting personas – represented in the opposition between the two women, between the two men and between the housekeeper and the Mother of the family.

As the film progresses the behaviour of the characters seems to evolve, and at least apparently, in a contradictory manner. So, not only the "manichean" view of the characters that we are presented with in the beginning of the film is discarded later on, but also the personalities of the characters appears to suffer from some form of mutation that leads them closer to what was their opposite. With one exception though: Camile, the main character, and the only true archetype. Only one catch: such archetype is constructed from within that persona, which, naturally, not only makes it impossible for the other characters in the film to understand her, but it also implies that solely by intuition, and not by a classical logic construction, we can catch a glimpse of her nature.

"O Principio da Incerteza", or "the uncertainty principle" is actually a cinematic representation of Werner Heisenberg's quantum physic's principle: The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known.