Behind the Sun (Abril Despedaçado) | Review

Drama is visually beautiful but siffers from lack of story.

One gets a certain sentiment of nostalgia whenever you walk into a family home only to become aware of a sense of family through faces in photos of picture frames that decorate the walls. In this oeuvre, the newest picture on the wall isn’t the newborn of the family; but regrettably, it represents a face from the past. Drenched in an eye for an eye mind-set, Walter Salles Behind the Sun-a Best Foreign nominated film brings us knee deep into the cycle of life and hatred between two families- that don’t have to look up the word ‘loss’ in the dictionary. Fuelled with the will to survive or outlast another, we witness the most interesting aspect of this odd neighbour relationship- a deep respect for the act of revenge and for the honour behind the settling of accounts.

Salles best know for directing the excellent 1998 film Central Station, brings us a picture loaded in themes; the adversity of hard labour, the will for hope and escapism are all key elements that are melted within the film’s storyline-a somewhat slow account which matches the speed of the sugar-cane production level of the protagonist’s family. A man with a face to tell a thousand stories and his remaining two sons are the central figures in this story. A boy that goes by the name of ‘kid’ and his older brother Rodrigo Santoro who follows the tradition of a marked-man are looking to mentally or physically escape the grips of a life not worth living. The story structure may be somewhat of a painfully slow journey but in terms of cinematography, the shot composition and the framing of the shots- there is a true filmmaking creation of visual poeticism. The texture of the images gives the film a certain Sergio Leone-ish dirt-coloured old West look and the close-ups and different angle shots of the manual labour, the simple photography of a yellow-blood-stained shirt and a frantic fight for survival chase-sequence inside the brush are all examples of Salles genius work done behind the camera. But all the beautiful backdrop scenery of his native Brazil can’t help the film’s shape of the plot. With a narrative breeze in the wrong direction, there is this fable-like treatment of the script; it abuses the heavy foreshadowing related to the child’s book and it sums itself up into a film that lacks the emotionally richness that is evoked by the imagery. Behind the Sun’s ending, which includes the timely rainfall and the added on romantic interlude tarnishes the film with overdramatic closure but in the end you’ll be seduced by the image, but displeased by a film that tatters off in the narrative.

Rating 3 stars