An Oddity Named ‘Bacurau’ Is on the Docket as Manhattan’s IFC Center Celebrates Its 20th Anniversary

The IFC Center on Manhattan’s Sixth Avenue is in the process of celebrating its 20th anniversary by mounting a series of films, “20 Films for 20 Years.” It’s been a wild round robin of movies culled from the world over, including an Oscar winner for Best Picture, Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” (2019), Bill Morrison’s haunting documentary, “Dawson City: Frozen Time” (2017), and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s superlative rumination on the strains of keeping the collective head of one’s family above water, “Shoplifters” (2018).Among the oddest items on the docket is a Brazilian film co-directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, “Bacurau” (2020). Mr. Mendonça Filho’s previous film, “Aquarius” (2016), was a study in the often rapacious nature of economic development and the long-standing verities of place. Sonia Braga starred as a 65-year old woman who refuses to knuckle under to real estate developers eager to tear down the apartment building she calls home. Some observers pegged it as the best performance of Ms. Braga’s career. That sounds about right to this critic.Ms. Braga is also on hand for “Bacurau.” This time around the actress isn’t at the center of the proceedings — the picture is very much an ensemble piece — but Ms. Braga cuts an imposing figure all the same as the lone doctor in an arid Brazilian backwater called Bacurau. Don’t bother trying to locate the place on a map: It’s a fictional town close enough to civilization that a nearby political candidate comes by to campaign for votes, but remote enough to cultivate its own culture. The screenplay, co-written by Messrs. Mendonça Filho and Dornelles, plunks us down in the middle of the place with nary a how-do-you-do. Whatever we can glean about the customs of Bacurau and its relationship to the broader culture is achieved by inference, not explication. The setting is simultaneously pre-modern and contemporary. The niceties of modern day infrastructure are meagre, but the citizens have cellphones and video displays. Where and when are we?The answer is within the boundaries of a universe culled from a lifetime spent at the movies. Bacurau is a not-so-distant relative of the isolated villages seen in Akira Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai” (1954) and “Yojimbo” (1961), or the remote townships favored by Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci, and other maestri of the Spaghetti Western. Not a few times during the run of “Bacurau” one expects to hear the distinctive strains of Ennio Morricone’s theme music for Leone’s “The Good, The Bad and the Ugly” (1966). Instead, the filmmakers go with sprightly Brazilian pop songs that aren’t as anomalous as one might think — largely because “Bacurau” is laced with a blatant strain of irony, a degree of apocalyptic portent and old school cinematic flourishes. A mixed bag, this kind of thing, and Messrs. Mendonça Filho and Dornelles hold it together by not worrying overly much about narrative or temporal logic. When we discover the identity of the boss to a posse of gun-wielding villains, we realize that the character is less important than the actor — in this case, the silky and snide Udo Kier.The plot of the picture is — well, it’s murky. Why Mr. Kier’s cadre of English-speaking mercenaries are out to decimate the citizens of Bacurau may have something to do with local politics or, more likely, the bestial nature to which humankind can descend. Then there are those nameless pills that the Bacurauians repeatedly ingest for reasons that remain unclear and a city that seems to be equipped, not for indoor plumbing, but incarceration of a rather elaborate sort. As it turns out, our heroes are not always heroic.In retrospect, “Bacurau” sounds tiresome, like a post-modernist lark distinguished by a casual loping tempo. On the other hand, you can’t help but be entranced by its go-for-broke whimsy while watching the damned thing. How much you enjoy the movie will depend on the credence you give to immediate impact or the mild hangover following in its wake.

An Oddity Named ‘Bacurau’ Is on the Docket as Manhattan’s IFC Center Celebrates Its 20th Anniversary

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