Direction: Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles
Country: Brazil
Acclaimed cineaste Kleber Mendonça Filho, the mastermind behind treasures such as Neighboring Sounds (2012) and Aquarium (2016) and one of the most important representatives of modern Brazilian cinema, teams up with co-writer/director Juliano Dornelles in Bacurau, a wildly entertaining and psychedelic Western crammed with snappy dialogue, permanent tension, and often brash, brutal situations.
The title of the film refers to the fictional remote village planted in a parched rural area of Northeast Brazil, whose small yet united population follows organized strategies to fight a bunch of American psychopaths led by the ruthless German-born Michael (Udo Kier). This group of invaders is secretly backed up by a greedy politician, Tony Junior (Thardelly Lima), who had fallen in disgrace in Bacurau.
I should say that the characters are underexplored, but the fusion of gory Western a-la Jodorowsky, violent and witty thriller in the line of Tarantino, and poignant drama with a strong message of resistance to social issues, is enough to enjoy this fun ride from start to finish. Notwithstanding, two characters stand out: Domingas (Sonia Braga), a reliable, if bitter, doctor who becomes virulent under the effect of alcohol, and Lunga (Silvero Pereira), a ferocious warrior who promptly returns to the town where he grew up to protect its people from the evil foreigners.
Less offbeat and more fabricated than Filho’s previous directorial efforts, Bacurau still thrums with puzzlement and energy, relying on delicious and often mysterious details to succeed - the town’s disappearance from all maps, a drone with the shape of a vintage UFO patrolling the skies, a police car inexplicably abandoned, a puzzling deadly sport whose practice expands beyond the local, a bullet-holed water truck, and the capacity of response from a village that instantly morphs from lively active to ghostly to sanguinary. All of this comes bolstered with a tasteful soundtrack and an invulnerable belief in the power of the collective, which, in a way, serves as encouragement for the people to rebuff today's tyrannical Brazilian politics.
