L'homme des foules

A film that talks about different forms of loneliness in Brazilian society through the lives of Juvenal and Margô. One is the driver in the Minas Gerais subway, while the other is responsible for the flow of trains.

A slow film, so slow, that when you accelerate it remains at normal speed... A slowness that brings with it all the melancholy and simplicity in the lives of ordinary men, workers hoping for better days... Based on the short story The Man of the Crowd, by Edgar Allan Poe, who reminded me of an excerpt from a documentary about the lives of train drivers, filled with trauma and loneliness, practically every day they encounter suicides on their routes... Sad and melancholic...

Brazilian film "O Homem Das Multidões" is about a tram driver in Belo Horizonte. It describes a drab, almost dull life of a railroad worker named Juvenal who has chosen to maintain a sort of minimal contact with the outside world. The pace of the film is excruciatingly slow. There is hardly any scene whose presence is not justified to convey a harsh, unrelenting atmosphere of loneliness. For Brazilian directors Cao Guimaraes and Marcelo Gomes, the inspiration for the film arose from the sense of solitude an individual feels in a large metropolis. For this reason, they have aimed to use two archetypal reactions to a modern, industrial society to reflect on the process of isolation of the individual. This film defies an easy classification but it necessitates some extra efforts from viewers as it has shades of what can be termed as a 'festival film'. The richness of an aesthetic experience is conveyed through Ivo Lopes' cinematography as the film has been shot in the square format. It helps in converting this tale of loneliness into a series of artworks which combine the retro appeal of a Polaroid with the feel of a modern digital display.