Do Visível ao Invisível

There's a rare breed of filmmakers who manage to keep their work interesting, challenging and moving as they get older. Manoel de Oliveira is probably the most extreme example of such a fact, given he directed this delightful satirical short at the considerable age of 97.

From the Visible to the Invisible takes place in Brazil, and opens with a wide shot of the city (the invisible), before cutting to two friends (the visible) who run into each other on the street. Their attempts to catch up, however, are continuously interrupted by someone calling them on their cell phones. Hence the brilliant idea: in order to talk properly, they have to phone each other, in the middle of the street, with only six inches separating them.

De Oliveira's concise and witty comment on life in the 21st century is already laudable by itself purely because of the smart concept. The real selling point, though, is the format he chose to tell it: to be able to tell a full story and make a point in merely six minutes at that age, while a lot of younger, "hipper" directors fail to do the same in two hours, is possibly the achievement of a lifetime. As someone once said, brevity is the soul of wit. Rarely has that phrase felt more appropriate.