Today, we saw a Brazilian movie "behind the sun", as a part of our curriculum. After a long while I've seen a good movie. The story was intact - not a strong one - but it was the presentation which took it to an altogether different level of experience. The imagery used by the director is simply marvellous.
The story is narrated by a boy, who doesn’t even have a name! His family has a small sugarcane field, and they produce raw sugar out of it. The whole routine is so monotonous, that there is not much difference left between the oxen and them. The movie starts with the boy walking in the woods at the dawn, where he narrates the whole story in flashback. He has a family of four, Pa, ma, him and his elder brother Tonio.
Basically it’s a story of two families fighting for land. A story of never ending vengeance, where one family kills one member of the other family, and the other family takes it revenge by killing the killer. The cycle goes on and on for generations. There’s an excellent dialogue by the boy; he describes the whole affair as "An eye for an eye, until all are blind".
The elder brother of Tonio was killed by the other family. Tonio kills the killer, and then asks for a truce to the eldest of the other family. Nobody in the family is willing for a truce, so when the eldest comes out and tells Tonio that truce is granted, for a moment, we expect that finally he has recognized the futility of the whole bloodshed. But the next sentence sounds even harsher on this background. He actually says “we grant you truce.... truce until the next full moon” the whole scene is very good piece of script writing. The life of Tonio, as the eldest points out is now “split into two halves”- the twenty years he lived before and the fifteen days left with him. On the background a clock is ticking. Referring to that the old man says “... it say one more, one more, one more.... for you it says, one less, one less, one less.....”.
The whole movie is loaded with such powerful dialogues and imagery. E.g. there is a scene in which the boy is discussing about going to circus with his elder brother. The elder brother, Tonio, warns him the father won't like it. The boy remarks that they are like oxen. On the next day, the oxen are shown to go around the mill by their own. In just one scene, the director underlines the obligation that everybody in the family should follow the same path without thinking...
Indeed, the movie is more about presentation than it is about the story. So my “review” may not convey the whole beauty of it. But all I can say is that it’s a must watch movie, for all those who look at cinema as a serious art.
