There's some very nice film work coming out of Brazil these days. This is my third experience with the films of Walter Salles Jr., and I've yet to be disappointed.

Historical Background: Walter Salles Jr. has earned international acclaim as the preeminent Brazilian filmmaker. His film Central Station (1998) received the Best Foreign Film award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and earned its female lead, Fernanda Montenegro, an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress and selections as Best Actress from the National Board of Review and the Los Angeles Film Critics' Association. Central Station is also number six on my personal list of the best foreign films (see Non-English Language Films that pack a wallop.)

Salles began his filmmaking career with documentaries. His first feature fiction film was Exposure (1991). Then came Foreign Land (1996), an international mystery set in Brazil and Portugal and co-directed by Daniela Thomas. After Central Station (1998), Salles teamed up again with Thomas for Midnight (1998). Behind the Sun was made in 2001. A more recent effort by Salles is The Motorcycle Diaries (2003), based on the early part of the life of Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Salles's films are set against the backdrop of the poverty-stricken peasants of South America and often in the parched plains of Brazil.

The Story: The story unfolds in the remote and tiny village of Stream-of-Souls in the Brazilian badlands, in 1910. Two families that live on opposite sides of a sugarcane field have been locked in a blood feud for generations. The Ferreiras seem to be having the best of it, since they live in an expansive villa in an extended family, including the blind patriarch, his children, and grandchildren. The Breves family is down to the aging parents, a son Tonho (Rodrigo Santoro), who is about twenty, and a boy of about ten, known simply as "Kid" (Ravi Ramos Lacerda).

The feud is as bizarre as it is deadly. Under the ground rules governing this insane tradition, the bloodstained shirt of the latest victim, on either side, is hung out in the wind until the blood turns yellow under the beating sun, which takes two or three weeks. During that time, a truce is declared between the two families. In fact, by custom, the most recent murderer is allowed to attend the victim's funeral to pray for his soul and, then, to request the truce from the patriarch of the opposing clan. A black armband is then placed around the bicep of the killer to mark him as the next victim. Once the blood on the shirt has turned color, the eldest son of the victimized clan is sent out to stalk and kill the most recent killer, but the stalker is under strict orders to kill only that one member of the opposing clan.

As the story begins, the Kid is relishing a shoulder ride on the back of his eldest brother Ignacio, at the very moment when the latter is gunned down by a sniper. By the time Ignacio had spied the momentary gleam of light glistening off the gun's barrel, it was too late. Ignacio's shirt is duly hung out to dry. After the requisite interval, the irate father (José Dumont) dispatches the next eldest son, Tonho, to defend the family's honor and avenge his brother's death. At the dinner table, the Kid, who adores Tonho, urges him not to go, but is slapped violently by his father for his heresy. It a magnificently filmed chase scene, the fleet Tonho chases down the fleeing eldest son of the Ferreira clan and wounds him mortally with a shot to the chest. The winded Tonho watches breathlessly as his victim dies slowly, with a look of agonizing desperation. Soon, Tonho attends his victim's wake, is granted the standard truce, and is duly marked as the next target. The blind enemy patriarch asks Tonho whether he's ever known a woman (he hasn't) and assures him that he never will.

Back at home for the interim, the Breves family struggles to make a go of it, harvesting and processing the sugarcane. Where slaves had once provided the labor, the family of four must now do all of the work by themselves, aided only by a pair of oxen. The cane must be cut and shredded and thrown into the grinding machinery, which is powered by the oxen. The price of refined sugar is falling, however, and the family is barely able to eke out a subsistence living. It certainly doesn't help that their family is continuously growing smaller by attrition. Their dwelling is humble and dominated by framed portraits of the previous victims of the multigenerational feud. So relentless are the swipes of death's scythe that the Breves parents have not even bothered to give their youngest boy a name. For his part, Kid dreams of nobler alternatives to the mindless and dismal tribalism into which he and his brothers have been born.

One day during the truce, two itinerants, a young man and a younger woman in a wagon, stop to ask Kid for directions to the small village nearby. The woman is beautiful and gives Kid a book, as a gift for his help. Although he is unable to read, Kid closely studies the pictures in the book, which include one of some fish in the sea and another of a mermaid. The mermaid reminds Kid of the gypsy woman and he concludes that they are one and the same. Even Tonho marvels at the book. Later, during a trip to town, Tonho discovers that the pair of travelers that Kid met is part of a ragtag circus that will be performing in town. Back home, Tonho tells Kid the news and the two are soon slipping out in the night to the circus, despite the likelihood that their father will thrash them both in the morning. The travelers that Kid met on the road turn out to be Salustiano (Luis Carlos Vasconcelos), the ringmaster, and Clara (Flavia Marco Antonio), a fire-eater and acrobat. Shades of Fellini's La Strada! Tonho is thunderstruck when he spies the sexy Clara and the Kid exclaims, resorting to the obvious pun for a sexy fire-eater, that she sure is "hot." Later, Salustiano gives Kid a name – "Pacu," after a kind of river fish.

The next day, Tonho pays a solo visit to Clara, as the troupe is dismantling their equipment. Clara climbs up a rope and, in a beautifully filmed sequence, swirls through the air as Tonho spins the base of the rope from below. Tonho contemplates running away with the circus, going so far as to travel with them to their next stop, but ultimately returns to his family and the doom that awaits him. Later, Clara decides to leave Salustiano (who, it turns out, is her step-father, not her husband) and goes after Tonho, with whom she has fallen in love. Salustiano warns her that Tonho is all but dead already. "They would rather kill than solve their problems," says Salustiano. "Those are real fanatics." Clara makes her way to Tonho's home and the two spend the night together. At least Tonho will not die without having known a woman.

The time allotted for the truce has expired, the blood on the shirt has turned yellow, and the final denouement must inevitably come. I won't add more about how the story is resolved, except to say that the ending is transcendent and bittersweet.

Themes: Clearly, this story is a parable for the endless cycles of violence that afflict human societies throughout the world. The fact that the film is set in Brazil, while the original novel on which it was based was set in the Balkans, illustrates the universality of the issues. Roger Ebert suggests that it could just as well have been set in the "Middle East, in Bosnia, in India, in Africa, in any of those places where people kill each other because of who their parents were." He's right, of course, but it's also noteworthy that he's omitted what are arguably the preeminent participants in endless cycles of violence – the Western imperialist nations, including his own. The story could be likened not only to the Hatfield and McCoy feud of Appalachia or the endless conflicts that occurred between European settlers and native Americans in the eighteen and nineteenth centuries, but also to the on-going conflict between the United States and the Moslem world. Behind the Sun is ultimately about the futility of violence, which is always more readily understood as it relates to others than one's one country or people.

The mother of the Breves family complains, "In this house, the dead command the living." And so they do! The bullheaded fathers send each successive son to his death to avenge the ones already dead. It is the Kid who is wisest in understanding the stupidity of it all. He observes that an "eye for an eye only leads to everyone being blind." Salustiano also notes the madness of the feud, describing it as "like two serpents eating each other's tails until nothing remains, just a pool of blood." For all the insanity of the feud's inherent rituals, the feud as represented in this film is actually less absurd than many of the on-going cycles of violence of the real world today. The Breveses and Ferreirases are at least strict in their principle of only going after the actual perpetrator of the most recent killing, not other members of the opposing clan. In the modern world, America simply strikes indiscriminately at innocent Iraqis when the actual terrorists cannot be brought to justice. Genocidal efforts in Africa and elsewhere, sponsored by various perpetrators of violence, aim at the final destruction of all of those in the enemy clan. By comparison, the behavior of the Breveses and Ferreirases is almost civilized and honorable. Ending such cycles of violence requires some sort of transcendent act of spiritual nobility, as Salles duly illustrates at the film's conclusion.

Production Values: The screenplay, written by Salles with Sérgio Machado and Karim Aïnouz, was based on a novel by Ismail Kadare entitled Broken April and set in Albania. There's some rich symbolism, although Salles seems unwilling, at times, to trust his audience to "get it" without spelling it out overtly. For example, there's an obvious parallel between the oxen walking in circles and the cycles of violence that are literally consuming the people. When one of the oxen collapses in exhaustion after having been driven too hard by the father, the oxen are later seen walking in a circle around the mill even though they are no longer in yoke. That's a nice bit of symbolism – until Pacu makes the point oh so explicit, saying, "We here are like the oxen. We go round and round and never go anywhere." The steady creaking of the sugarcane mill also provides a metronome-like background suggestive of fate's timepiece ticking off the seconds until the next killing. The pace of the film is leisurely, providing a poetic quality.

The cinematography provided by Walter Carvalho is nothing short of dazzling. It brings to mind some of the Western landscapes of American painters, such as Frederic Remington. The stark, monochromatic backgrounds of the arid caatinga plains possess a rough-hewn beauty. In addition to the marvelous chase scene and the aerial acrobatics mentioned above in the story section, there's another exquisite bit of photography when Tonho is riding a swing into the blue sky, with Pacu providing the oomph. The soundtrack features haunting kinds of sound effects, which augments the sense that the story is a parable.

Ravi Ramos Lacerda ably plays the Kid (a.k.a. "Pacu") with sensitivity but without self-conscious cuteness. Rodrigo Santoro is something of a heartthrob and a talented actor as well. He has smoldering eyes and angular good looks reminiscent of a young Richard Gere. His performance as Tonho is passionate and powerful. Also outstanding is Flavia Marco Antonio as the comely Clara. Many of the performers were non-professionals, but it is never apparent which ones.

Bottom-Line: Behind the Sun is a highly regarded film and rightfully so. The cinematography is outstanding and three of the sequences are especially magnificent. The performances are very good. The "absurdity-of-violence" theme, delivered as a parable, is a solid one, but the logical flaws of the story leave too easy a way out for those viewers not sympathetic to the message. Ebert, for example, allows himself to conclude that "they were getting what they deserved" and recognizes no parallel between the story and the aggressive actions of the present day U.S. government. I'm afraid that this lovely and entertaining film is only preaching to the choir. Accordingly, I give it four stars. Behind the Sun is in Portuguese with English subtitles and has a running time of about 92 minutes.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Brazil:

Black Orpheus
Central Station
City of God
The Motorcycle Diaries
Pixote
Quilombo.
Xica

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older