Saw this at the Berlinale 2019. I was glad to have read the synopsis beforehand, otherwise I would have understood nothing of what happened. Without preparation I had admired the farming rituals and the rural environment, mostly due to reminiscences of my younger years when I grew up on a farm (half a century ago), some distance from neighbours and far from the rest of the world. I must admit, of course, that the distances between farms in this movie are much larger than most in my youth, but inevitable feelings of similarities remain. The isolation creates a 24/7 life style, very different from city life and hardly understood by outsiders. That mental distance is two-sided. We see that illustrated when the farm hands (for example) scratch their heads about the term "happy hour" for the consumation of large quantities of alcoholic drinks in a short time frame.
Farming, working on the land and handling animals may seem romantic in the eyes of the average citizen, but there are other sides of the coin. Though cattle can be objectively considered to be not much more than moving capital, the warm way these people handle their animals show that it by far exceeds money on four legs moving around (or two legs in the case of chickens). We see price negotiations, on the other hand, follow familiar rules as we know "in the city", after which the sold cattle is handed over without any form of mourning. Money must be made, another (colder) side of said coin.
The robbery in question is shown several times throughout the running time (quote: "a robbery has to be fast", literally repeated). I assume (not supported by facts) that we saw a recurring nightmare, as the fragments did not logically fit in the story at hand. Also remarkable in the screenplay is that we see Marcelo just coming back at work after some absence. In one of the opening scenes someone says to him that he could have prolonged his absence longer. In other words, he is back from a down period, sort of sick leave after the robbery of 100 pieces of cattle for which he felt himself responsible. Conversely, his last work day on the farm is shown near the end.
All in all, I conclude that everything is shown out of sequence, leaving it to us viewers to join the puzzle pieces together in order to arrive at a logical story. It is a choice any filmmaker can make, as long as it benefits our viewing experience. This time I'm not so sure. Nevertheless, I won't go that far as to dismiss this way of storytelling. My only grip on the story was the synopsis that I've read beforehand. I fear that not everyone will be so lucky, and I wonder what they will think when watching this movie unprepared.
