José and Pilar

A true love story indeed and a real one. The Portuguese novelist José Saramago (1998 Nobel Prize winner) knew in the second half of his life, by chance, the Spanish journalist Pilar Del Rio, more than 20 years younger than him and they fell in love with each other almost at once. They lived together till his death in 2010. From a certain moment on they went to live in Lanzarote (Canary Islands) since he found much more support from the Spanish authorities than from the Portuguese ones at the time. They eventually married each other. This movie shows the last years of their lives in a documentary form with great quality. The images speak for themselves without the need of great explanations and the dialogues between the couple and with other people are so natural, spontaneous and true and supported by a very intelligent shooting and cut that we can feel how that relationship between novelist and wife is illuminated by a true love, a love that doesn't have great visual expression in manners and attitudes but whose depth we can feel in the constant cooperation and assistance Pilar gives to José not only personal but also and very important, in his writing activities, being simultaneously a careful and loving wife and an efficient secretary and public relations. Thus she contributed very much to his literary success and we can also feel his gratitude for that. This documentary real love story will touch you more than many fiction movies of the same kind.

Yeah, that's a "love story."

...or given the message of his books, profoundly hypocritical in his own life

It's so hard to make an engaging documentary. The usual process is to make the facts of stories you're supposed to be told into a coherent narrative line, even if in reality that line isn't so clear. That will provide the audiences with a story, something to follow. But how you follow that story is usually in a more external way than how you watch fiction, because in documentary you can't or won't have the same devices to fold you into the thing. You have always that trick on reenact some stuff, if the theme is history. That's lame to me, and lazy.

Now here you have something really interesting. The film shows us countless excerpts of the lives of the 2 protagonists throughout the course of about 2 years. The film is presented as a reportage, more than a documentary, meaning that images are what you make of it, words come up apparently loosely. No bent narrative is delivered to you. Or so it seems.

Underneath this apparently random display of images, there's a subtle layered structure. The life of the couple José/Pilar in the period of the film mapped to the story of the elephant in the book Saramago is writing. The story that this film displays mapped into the larger story of Saramago's life, with all its weight in the story of literature and Portuguese culture, as we get it in between the lines in several moments of the narrative. The whole idea of journey and encounter mapped into the love story of José and Pilar.

And ultimately, as the title denounces, that story is central here. The idea of a pair of people bound by the art of one of them, who chooses to share it, allow the other half to be a part of it. Live as one, that's the beautiful part of the story. I'm glad they chose to share a bit of that story with as, by allowing us to get into it.

His art matters. He is a humanist, has profound ideas, truly powerful ideas, and changed language, invented a new way on which people can express.

There is one moment when the metaphor for journey mapped into people's lives is perfect: in Saramago's hometown, one street has his name, another street which crosses the other one has her name. Crossed paths.

My opinion: 4/5

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It's all very easy to reduce a documentary like this to just that: a documentary. I like to think of it as a window, nay, a door. I'm Portuguese and, beside a theatre play my dad bought for me and made me stand in line to have it signed by Saramago when I was a child, I never managed to enjoy reading his books. Loved the stories, struggled with the novels.

So, it was a huge surprise when I discovered this man, playful and witty as dense and morose; when I discovered his wife, thus far a very behind-the-scenes person, very outspoken but seldom seen; and the mere thought of having heaps of footage and manage to edit years of shadowing the couple to a mere two hours, seamlessly stitched together.

I couldn't help but feel deeply moved by the episodes the film depicts, the portraits the camera takes all the way through time and the love story between a rather senior Portuguese writer and a rather younger Spanish journalist. In Portugal, we say, 'love knows no age.' It does, actually. However, it knows no time. And that's what 'José And Pilar' tells us.

I fell compelled to send a copy to all my friends who, as I, live outside Portugal. It really is that good. Watch it and make sure you take it all in.

The Portuguese Nobel Laureate José Saramago was never an easy writer or agreeable public figure. Moreover, his political inclinations, a mixture of Iberism and Communism, were quite the opposite of mine. So I must admit that I sat down to watch the documentary with some degree of prejudice.

However the opening and the quality of the photography captivated me immediately and I could not stop wandering how the Director managed to make such a remarkably enjoyable documentary with such persona.

It certainly helped the fact that his young wife – Pilar – is such a lively and interesting person. She is the personification of the vibrant qualities we find among modern Spaniards. But what captivated me more was how she could devote herself so intensely to an elderly and sick husband.

The Director, being himself an admirer of José, did not attempt to color or capture only the rosy moments of the Portuguese writer. He gives a truthful and yet endearing image of the couple.

The secret probably lies in the way he manages to show that love knows no age barriers. Undoubtedly, this is an Oscar-winning candidate.