The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)
IN CONTEXT
GENRE
Drama
DIRECTOR
Walter Salles
WRITERS
Marcos Bernstein, João Emanuel Carneiro, Walter Salles
STARS
Fernanda Montenegro, Vinícius de Oliveira
BEFORE
1996 Terra Estrangeira (Foreign Land) is Salles’s first notable movie, and it is shown at more than 40 film festivals around the world.
AFTER
2004 The Motorcycle Diaries, about the life of the young Che Guevara, brings Salles another international success.
2012 Salles’s On the Road, a screen adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s iconic novel, is a commercial flop.
On its release in 1998, Walter Salles’s breakout hit was immediately nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. The story of an orphan looking for his father might sound like sentimental Hollywood fare, but in Salles’s hands it is an often dark, always clear-eyed look at big-city poverty, given added authenticity by the fact that its child star, Vinícius de Oliveira, was making ends meet as a shoe-shine boy in Rio de Janeiro when Salles spotted him.
A journey
Although it is a boy, Jesué (de Oliveira), who is lost, alone in Rio after his mother dies in a road accident, Central Station (Central do Brasil) isn’t so much the story of his emotional journey as that of Dora (Fernanda Montenegro), his reluctant guardian. Dora works at the titular station, writing letters for illiterate people who trust her to mail them—but few make it to the mailbox, since Dora has no conscience. When she sells Jesué to an illegal adoption agency, she tells her outraged friend, “He’ll be better off.” That Dora eventually finds her conscience and puts things right is no surprise, but what stands out is the naturalism and ease with which the story develops. When Dora’s attempt to take the boy back to his father backfires, she gives up trying to outwit fate and simply plays her part: once a reluctant messenger, she makes sure this package gets to its destination.
"This is not a heartwarming movie about a woman trying to help a pathetic orphan, but a hard-edged film about a woman who thinks only of her own needs."
Roger Ebert
What else to watch: Foreign Land (1996) ✵ City of God (2002) ✵ Carandiru (2003) ✵ Slumdog Millionaire (2008)