409. Vidas Secas/Barren Lives (1963)

Running Time: 103 minutes
Directed By: Nelson Pereira dos Santos
Written By: Nelson Pereira dos Santos, from novel by Graciliano Ramos
Main Cast: Atila Iorio, Maria Ribeiro, Joffre Soares, Gilvan Lima, Genivaldo Lima

CINEMA NOVO

This one's been staring a hole through me, from my Netflix instant queue, for quite a while now, so I figured I'd better get to watching it, before the hole got any bigger. As I kind of half suspected, it wasn't my cup of tea.

"Vidas Secas" follows a family of four, headed up by Fabiano (Iorio) and Vitoria (Ribeiro), as they cross the desert on foot, in search of shelter and a place for Fabiano to work. Eventually the family come upon a house, where they take shelter from a rainstorm and the following day, when the owner of the home returns, he hires Fabiano on as a cowhand. The family does pretty good for a while, with Fabiano working steady and Vitoria trying her best to save up for a leather bed, that she yearns so desperately to sleep on. The children (2 boys) get along well too, sometimes helping their father rope in the animals. Things take a turn for the worse when Fabiano's boss double-crosses him on his weekly earnings and later, when Fabiano loses his week's pay in a game of cards. After a scuffle with the police, Fabiano lands in jail where he is beaten and then released the next day and ultimately Fabiano and his family are forced to leave their temporary shelter.

There really is more to it than that, but that's the basic meat & potatoes, as far as the plot is concerned. What I took away from the film is the life lesson that when you're up, back down again is never that far away. Life is full of little spurts - some good, some bad, but ultimately we all have some sort of place in the grand scheme and if we keep on trucking, we may just find it. Those are fine & dandy messages to shoot across, but this film just didn't work for me, not one bit. I don't want to come across as a hard ass, but why should I care about these particular characters? What is so special about THESE characters, that I should suddenly allow my heartstrings to be tugged on and "feel their pain"? There are hundreds of thousands of movies in the world, and all of a sudden this poor, down on their luck family comes trotting across the desert and all of a sudden, their due my sympathies. There's no establishment that I should be caring about these people. The film gets right underway and before twenty minutes has even gone by, we realize that "Oh, I'm supposed to feel for these people, they're having a hard time". I realize this is part of a neo-realist movement and a new age for cinema in Brazil and that maybe the messages and the characters aren't supposed to be up in your face, but I don't mind subtle realism. I just have a problem with a film that's basis is about me sympathizing with it's characters, when the characters are as hollow as a chocolate bunny at Easter.

SPOILER ALERT!

You know who I really felt sorry for, the kids and the dog. The kids were just hanging in there, being drug around, from town to town and job to job and when they spoke out of turn they got slapped for it. And that poor dog and the most heartbreaking scene of the movie, when Fabiano shoots him and we have to hear him yelp and cry, as he breathes his last breath. That's where my sympathies lied. As for the rest of this movie, chalk it up as another film that I will never comprehend how anyone...ANYONE could slap a "MUST SEE" banner around! Trust me, there is absolutely nothing MUST SEE about "Vidas Secas". Sure you might want to see it, or have an interest in seeing it and that's fine, but no one should tell you that THIS movie is something that simply must be seen, because it is not! But hey, as LeVar Burton would say, don't take my word for it, it's currently streaming on Netflix.

RATING: 2.5/10 Okay, so it gets a few points for a few key scenes and because I've sat through worse, but this just wasn't for me.

MOVIES WATCHED: 379
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 622

December 28, 2011 7:30pm