mateus_bf

Idi i Smotri is a vital movie. The kind of film every human being needs to watch. It is more haunting than a horror movie because all of it happened for real. Despite the fact Flyora is a fictional character, he and his fellow citizens represent the people who suffered the atrocities commited by their own species. You don't need to focus specially on the horrors of WWII. This movie represents all the atrocities humankind has commited: the Atlantic slave trade, the indigenous genocide that occured in America, medieval Inquisition, the Bengal famine, you name it.

In order for me not to mark it as a "spoilerish" review, the synopsis will be brief.

"Come and See" starts with Flyora, a boy who has idyllic dreams about being a soldier and fighting the war. He is extremely reprimmended by his mother. An interesting fact is that this scene, like many other scenes in the film, is made with the actor or actress talking directly to the camera. In this scene, it looks like we are Flyora and our mother is yelling at us. I believe that in this scene Elen Klimov tried to do a personal appeal at the audience, especially for people who think war is nice and "glorious". We are the immature kid who wanna go out make some war and the mother is Klimov, pleading for us not to do so.

In the end it was in vain. Two army officials get inside the house and take him out anyway. What happens next you will only find out watching the movie.

Something I really like about the movie is that the director didn't cut it much. Some shots can last as long as 2-3 minutes. This is vital if the author is trying to put a sense of realism in the picture, and it served the purpose very well. Some movies nowadays are so hasty that the directors simply cannot stop cutting them, like a real butcher. For me, a Tarkovsky fan, finding a movie with longer shots is glorious.

In the end, what I believe the author is trying to tell us is, despite the fact humankind has achieved some impressive levels of cruelty and savagery during the course of history, we cannot by all means lose our hope in that same humankind. We have the capacity for evilness, but also a lot of capacity for kindness and compassion, and we must not abandon our sense human dignity if we are to continue our journey into this absurd world.

P.S.: watched the movie a couple months ago, so not a fresh review. I don't think it matters, actually, because movies like these are not easy to forget.

"Desalma", the new series from Globoplay, has its flaws (there's no such a thing as a "perfect" series), but it's not the horrible thing some people here are trying to depict. It's a damn good series for brazilians who are looking for good quality national production with an outstanding cinematography and a consistent plot. It is also very good for foreigners who want to learn Portuguese, because the lines are delivered in an unhurried way.

Some people are comparing Desalma with Dark, the German hit series. Well, there are some similarities between both, but it mostly has to do with tropes and cliches of their genre. It does not mean Desalma is copying Dark (something that some people are accusing). I believe the main similarities are: both are mysteries (but Dark have a science fiction tendency and Desalma has a fantasy tendency); both are set in a small town (but that is a very common trait in mystery stories since Twin Peaks); both start with a suicide (which is a common topic in mystery stories). They also share a resemblance in its atmosphere and tone, but I believe it is because they hired Alexander Würtz, the sound editor of Dark, to work as a consultant.

"Desalma" is a mystery, but it revolves around fantasy, magic, folklore and witchcraft (unlike Dark, which revolves around time travel and science fiction), mostly about myths and legends that the Ukrainian immigrants who founded Brigida (the city where the story is set) brought from their native land.

The main flaw of this series is the acting. Most secondary actors gave a poor performance, only delivering the lines without really getting into their characters. But most of the main actors and actresses had a great performance, specially Cassia Kis (the witch Haia), Maria Ribeiro (Giovana Skavronski) and another character that would be a spoiler if I talk about...

The first episodes are kind of slow, but if you can get over them, the story becomes very gripping, with a quite good cliffhanger in the last episode. I'm already waiting for Season 2.

P.S.: Sorry for eventual bad English and for the excess of parentheses, but I can't keep from doing it when writing reviews.