WORLD CINEMA WONDERS: BACARAU (2019, dir by Kleber Mendonça Filho, Juliano Dornelles, Brazil)

For all those worried about the cottage industry of “the death of cinema” obituaries that have blossomed during COVID, it’s gonna be all right.

We got filmmakers like Brazilians Kleber Medonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles to take us on the vision quests we need much like the fictional townsfolk who take a psychedelic to prepare for battle in the stunning sci-fi action horror social commentary genre masterpiece Bacarau.

As long as exciting filmmakers who really understand cinema can get their hands on a camera, a cast, a good sound team, and crew, new works of art are going to get made that keep lighting the flares we need to keep going on this cinematic road.

Case in point: Bacarau, a kind of Brazillian Most Dangerous Game variation, that somehow marries bloody cinematic genre thrills with even more violently on point social critique and observations.

Bacarau’s first half is a masterclass in raising more intriguing questions than it answers. We know we’re a few years hence in a dystopic (aren’t they all) future. We’re never told exactly what has happened but we can see it. The townsfolk of the small Brazillian village Bacarau (named after a kind of predatory nocturnal bird-yes that comes into play later) seem resigned to things that shock us the viewers-a local river whose water is seemingly controlled by mercenaries, coffins being sold on the side of the road more often than flowers, some kind of YouTube or Tik Tok like channel that shows the 10 top kills of masked assassins in the city.

But the people of Bacarau don’t strike us as beaten down. Rather they soldier on, party, have sex, continue school for the children, basically make the most of what they can, despite troubling omens like a drone that appears to track certain villagers without explanation.

But even this tentative peace is disturbed with the mid-movie introduction of a European and American group of “tourist” killers who have come to kill everyone in Bacarau to let off some kind of first world steam and stress and anxiety.

What’s most disturbing about this premise and how it’s developed, is how the “tourist” killers (lead by a hilariously ambiguous Udo Kier of Fassbinder, Lars Von Trier, Andy Warhol fame) don’t seem to have any sense that what they’re doing is horrific. Even worse, they seem to have an entitled sense that this is their due.

One of the most horrific moments, thrown away quickly, is a short monologue one of the Americans has about how he went through a divorce, got a bunch of guns, wanted to visit his ex-wife and blow her away, then realized he could instead let off that steam here in Brazil by killing the villagers-without any seeming consequence.

But then we get yet another twist when the entitled tourist killers clearly gave no thought whatsoever to the intelligence of the villagers themselves. . .

Bacarau is firmly in that tradition of great genre movies with a subversive point. Think George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse, and even Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In.

But it even one ups these other movies in a way because it resolutely refuses to answer a lot of questions, over-explain, or wrap everything up in a “well at least I can stop thinking about this movie" kind of way.

You definitely are going to think about this movie for a long time.

When Bacarau ends, you feel completely satisfied (the climax is a doozy) but you also find yourself thinking about the future world that it hinted at but never fully detailed. Like many truly great tragedies or dramas, it leaves many lingering emotions and questions that act like agitations that might work to form a kind of psychic pearl of introspection in the viewer.

This American viewer left the movie feeling totally and utterly ashamed at how so much of the rest of the world views Americans. Often with much reason and cause. (It’s one of the movies many hilariously on point ironies that European Udo Kier, while a killer, feels superior to the Americans he is shepherding).

This programmer is very proud to be an American. But being an American has to mean also being willing to candidly acknowledge our shortcomings and actively work on them.

Entitlement and ignorance are unattractive qualities in any language, in any culture. Bacarau finds a cleverly captivating genre way to warn the first world about these bitter truths.

Written by Craig Hammill.Secret Movie Club Founder.Programmer