asmgodoy

Not always the title of a novel, or a movie, has to do with the main issue that is treated in the novel, or on the movie. It stands to The Name of Rose (there is no one called Rose in the novel), as well as to the Three Musketeers (Dumas tell us the story of D'Artagnan, and not the story of the musketeers, who are Athos, Porthos, and Aramis). It goes quite perfectly well to Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca. A classic, by all means, Rebecca has been challenging its viewers since 1940, the year it was released. Throughout the movie Rebecca is the main character, she is everywhere, she is in everyone's minds and thoughts, but she never appears. We have no idea of how she was, yet she remains at the core of this charming movie. Sir Lawrence Oliver (by then very you'd and handsome) is a millionaire who marries a humble girl, played by Joan Fontaine. They live in a castle, owned by the sometimes irksome millionaire. But Rebecca, to whom the millionaire was firstly married, seems to be everywhere. To impose herself in this new and aggressive milieu the humble girl has to face Rebecca's ghost. Amazing, and not arguably up to date, due to the mystery Hitchcock carries on.

As for the naturality and the intimacy of the dialogues, one feels as if one is watching a reality show. One has the feeling of watching the private life of the characters. There is a sort of an insinuation of voyeurism, quite telling in the scene in which Bia (Maeve Jenkings, a constant actress in Kleber Mendonças' movies) get excited by the washing machine sound and movements. The whole neighborhood is portraited, with quite an intense amount of realism. There is almost every feasible character in such places: a doorman who sleeps on duty, a drug dealer, a drug addict, an arrogant grandson of a decadent landowner. The director advances, digress, cut the narrative path, regain terrain, give false hints, inserts characters who surprise a good behavior viewer, used to the common north-American paradigm of begin-tension-happy end. It might be a hard movie to understand if the viewer demands a conventional plot. Not everything is explained, although almost every scene makes us think. However, it can be an easy movie if the central tension is understood at the beginning. Where is the main problem? The movie was shot in 2002 when the Brazilian problem of the militias was already into discussion Clodoaldo, a militiaman, and his brother, take care, they surprise the viewer. The 20 Brazilian reais they charge from every neighbor to protect them suggests some more profound thoughts. This is the mystery of this intriguing movie. Either you decipher or you will be devoured.

"The wave", directed by Dennis Gansel, pose us a question: are there conditions for the return of Nazism in Germany? In the movie, a bored German professor teaches Political Science. Nonetheless totally against any form of historical revisionism, he was chosen to teach a course on totalitarianism. He does not accept the task and decided to prove that Germany had all the conditions for the return of the totalitarianism phantom, for it was a condition that he assumed intrinsic to the cultural and historical identity of the students he was working with. His educational methods were similar to Goebbels's propaganda technics. He trickery involved the students, with symbols and subtle technics of intimidation. The swastika was replaced by a wave. The situation could be out of control. Dennis Gansel, the director, seems to remind us that freedom charges the price of eternal vigilance.