Bacurau is an old village in the Brazilian sertão (the outback). Its’ village matriarch has just died and her granddaughter Teresa (Bárbara Colen) has just returned from the outside world. The whole area exists in a simple, serene, traditional and humble lifestyle. But the town is neglected by the government. There is little phone coverage, basic foods, water, and materials arrive on an irregular schedule, their local government rep doesn’t respect them much, and the infrastructure is falling into disrepair. And then the village mysteriously disappears off of maps and GPS systems and it becomes apparent to those villagers something very hostile is at work.
Bacurau is written and directed by Kleber Mendoça Filho and Juliano Dornelles as a scathing indictment on the Brazilian governments’ treatment of such secluded communities. And it’s certainly a critique that has an international resonance. I know in Canada for instance, we constantly have to account for similar severe issues of Indigenous communities and lands being disrespected or forsaken by the government at large. Bacurau though, takes it a few steps further, setting the story within a vaguely speculative fiction reality in the not too distant future, where government neglect means something far more sinister than a mere lack of sustainable resources. And it’s where the movie impacts with an immense blunt force.
It’s a gradual build to be sure. Much of the first hour is spent building up the town, its’ people, their relationships, their customs and culture (an even dose of ritualistic tradition and contemporary adaption). It’s outsider character, Teresa, is actually quite at home in the community and its lifestyle, and we meet and get to know its other notable denizens, such as the tough and imposing Pacote (Thomas Aquino), the impassioned and vengeful Lunga (Silvero Pereira), village elder Plinio (Wilson Rabelo), and most boldly, the eccentric yet sharp and fearless Domingas (Kiss of the Spider Woman’s Sônia Braga). Of this cast, it’s Colen, Pereira, and Braga who stand out most, giving their all to even the quietest of scenes, and all three in possession of looks to kill. But they and their world are set against what appears to be a looming mystery through things such as bullet holes shot through the truck carrying their clean water supply, fewer and fewer outsiders dropping by, and the occasional appearance of a strange UFO-shaped drone. An early inclination based in its heavily steeped heritage and almost religious use and reverence of a local psychotropic drug (the effect of which is somewhat elusive) might be that there’s something uncanny to Bacurau itself or its people (many of whom are a bit odd in their own right) a la Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Lottery, both of which inspire to some degree this films’ sense of localized paranoia. But then the people of Bacurau start disappearing and turning up dead.
I dare not spoil anything major, because the film’s effect comes often by surprise, but there is a troupe of strangers in the area who are about the most hateable bunch of characters I’ve seen in a movie in years -a posse of sickeningly psychopathic Americans not too dissimilar from a particularly loathsome type of hobbyist, led by an evil and fearsome Udo Kier, there on a mission of violence and mayhem. The nature of their presence is the movies’ turning point and where both the plot and central theme become visceral. It’s on a similar wavelength to The Platform, if not as visually explicit, yet the message could not be clearer. This is a movie about repression and exploitation, not unexplainable phenomena. Bacurau itself is less an anomaly and more a victim, abandoned to despicable interests to an almost Orwellian degree.
Let’s talk about the aesthetic of Bacurau. The real-life stand-in is a village called Barra and it is the perfect scenic destination for the kind of atmosphere this movie ultimately evokes. It’s desolate and remote of course in an otherwise pristine-looking region, but it’s also got the feel of history, decomposed perhaps and a mere shadow of former fortune, but the signs of a once-important outpost nonetheless. Just shy of being a ghost town, it is the manifestation of rural decline and a governments’ failure to provide or even care for its residents. Particularly, it’s reminiscent of the kind of dilapidated towns seen in The Wild Bunch or a spaghetti western. The use of wipe transitions and practical prosthetic effects further this doubtless intentional comparison. And you can imagine where the plot is headed off of such imagery cues.
Those Americans are responsible for some very despicable acts (not to mention attitudes that once might have felt cartoonishly bigoted), and yet they pave the way for the third act of this movie to be one of the most thrillingly gratifying extended sequences in recent cinema. Violent and raw in a way that hearkens back to grindhouse revenge films, but with some real meaning behind it, Bacurau evolves into a cornucopia of beautiful carnage by its finale, delivering a message of resistance and intolerance towards those who would silence such forgotten voices.
Bacurau is wild and weird and exceptionally worthwhile. A sucker punch for attention towards these destitute communities that can’t easily be ignored, it’s a profound and uncomfortably believable illustration of a world where those in charge just stop caring ….and it remarks in no uncertain terms just what should be done with them.
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