The Turning Wind (1962) User Reviews (2)

Confusion as Political Statement *CONTAINS SPOILERS*

[kamerad · 7/10 · 18 March 2002]

I must honestly say that I never thought I would chose to write anything on Glauber Rocha. Frankly, the most common reactions I have when I watch a Rocha film are (in order) confusion, frustration, anger and boredom. At first I always find the films to be bold and dynamic. Quickly however, I begin to feel that the films aren't going anywhere. I lose track of who the characters are. That wouldn't be so bad, but I need the characters to help me understand what the filmmaker is trying to say. If I can't understand the point of the film, I become frustrated and wonder why I'm watching it in the first place. Rocha's flashy imagery and rhetoric spewing characters mean nothing to me. My brain shuts off and I fall asleep.

Please don't get me wrong. I believe Rocha to be an important filmmaker, and I really try to understand his films. It's just that they're so. I'm not quite sure. Weird doesn't begin to describe these films. Nevertheless, I think he deserves credit for attempting to present his ideas in a radically new way. I'm sure for many people his films are successful. Barravento, Rocha's first film, is probably the film that his admirers like the least, given that it is the least `Rocha-esque' and that Rocha himself disowned the film. It should be no surprise then, that Barravento is the only Rocha film I have seen so far that I have enjoyed. I hope to explain why I like this film while at the same time exploring the film flaws.

The story, unlike Rocha's other films, is easy to follow. On the surface, at least. Firmino returns to his hometown, the (predominantly black) fishing village of Burquino. Firmino is outraged that the townspeople are using equipment supplied by, and are working for a large fishing company. Firmino also feels that the people are brainwashed by their religion, Candomblé, and encourages the people to break free from it. He cuts the fishing nets in order for the people to go back to their previous fishing methods. His main opponent is Arua, the young, handsome virgin, whom the people respect and believe to be protected by the Sea Goddess. Firmino also has his girlfriend Cota seduce Arua, thereby depriving of his protection from the Sea Goddess. At the end after two climactic scenes (a wild storm, or barravento, that takes the lives of several people, and a one on one fight between Arua and Firmino, that Firmino wins), Firmino leaves the village again, followed by Arua. There is a subplot involving Arua's girlfriend's seduction into the Candomblé religion.

When this film was screened in my Cuban/Brazillian Film class at Concordia University here in Montreal, there seemed to be a great deal of confusion about the story. I found this odd, since the plot lines in Rocha's other films fly completely over my head, and this one seemed much easier to follow. However if the story itself was easy to follow, the motivations behind the characters are somewhat more muddled. However upon looking further into that, it seems the film might be more `Rocha-esque' than we first thought. Let me explain. The character of Firmino is an interesting one. The leftist ideology that he spreads throughout the film seems to make sense. In-fact he is a precursor to characters in later Rocha films, who stand in front of the camera and shout their views loudly, except Firmino is easier to follow, and in the end the townspeople decide that he was right. However he also causes the deaths (indirectly) of many people (including his lover) in order `enlighten the people'. This seems to be regarded by most people as a flaw in the films logic.

There are other contradictions as well. The film seems to support Arua's sexual awakening of being seduced by Cota. It is partly because of this that Arua is able to leave the village. However, Arua's seduction also seems cause the barravento. Also confusing is the films attitude towards the Candomblé religion. The film clearly has a message that the religion is entrapping the people, keeping them from realizing their potential, and yet the Sea Goddess seems to exist, causing the barravento. I believe however, that these `flaws' might be intentional. In the case of Firmino, Rocha might be making a comment about how just because someone's political ideas are in the progressive, that doesn't make him perfect. This theme is reflected in more complex ways in later films of his. Likewise, in the case of Arua and the Candomblé religion, the confusion might also be a way of commenting on the conventions of narrative and theme. Perhaps Rocha wants us to think about the way we normally see films as having a concrete `message'.

Of course, since Rocha did not finish the film himself, we won't know for sure if all this confusion is intentional, but I think I'm on to something. In fact I think the film helps one prepare for Rocha's later, even more challenging films by not giving us any easy answers.

Seas without god in the flow

[chaos-rampant · 22 July 2014]

Okay this is from the time that New Wave was sweeping European festival screens, the time Marxism was sweeping Latin American politics. The French at the time were looking into the intricacies of self, the notations that modern self splinters into. This works on another plane.

It is primarily centered on ritual, it offers a ritualized take of the struggles of life.

There is first the fishing, the joy of collective work. The place is a small fishing community off the coast of Bahia, untouched by modernity, nothing but ocean and palm trees, a place where slaves were unloaded time ago and all that has really changed generations later is that they are loaned a ramshackle fishing net by a merchant to go fishing with for the reward of keeping some of the fish for themselves.

They have kept the dances, one of them is samba, something that must have evolved from slave songs, it bears the call and response format, it sublimates hardship. Another ritual here. Gathered in a circle in the open air, old and young take turns entering the circle and doing a small dance, nothing elaborate, sloppy even, purely for the joy of airing the body, letting the toil pour itself out from the hips and limbs.

A third ritual. They have kept the magical belief from Africa, santeria, again the dance, the chanted call and response but now a sea goddess may be listening and has to be appeased. It's here that a muddled sense enters the picture. The samba was simple and exhilarating, it meant itself. Here we stretch to understand that the natives understand deeper forces to be moving their world.

Three rituals, rites that invite passage, that gradually introduce different facets of the forces that move this world.

A narrative is shaped behind these rituals. It's about a radical who has been to the city and back and urges the natives to throw the bonds of oppression. This is the typical Marxist message. In Soviet films he would have been the statuesque hero, bearer of revolution gospel to the oppressed. But this one is a seething scoundrel who plots murder. He berates their voodoo but only after he has tried it himself and the spell didn't work. Religion is seen as superstition, a meandering cycle to appease the sea instead of facing the real cause of worldly suffering.

A sense of powerful metaphysics begins to cloud the film. The notion is that there are no gods that move here, only the movements of ignorant mind groping with the horizon. The result is uncanny. Where we try to read metaphor into these cinematic flows of the sea, there's nothing. There's only their belief, their woe and confusion that creates these flows, no meaning outside what they are. This is no Stromboli; no Tempestaire; but cinematic space equally reveals inmost self.

So, why have this agitated man mouth off about revolution and not a more noble representative? Why tangle us and confuse instead of clearly present conflict? Because it may be a way of saying that if you hope to awaken people, you'll have to get tangled up in their world, and that doing this falls on people as confused and unenlightened.

Rocha works a powerful double perspective. The Marxist hero as another ignorant being, ignorance as the loss of self into ritualized perceptions, into emotional turbulence we create. And the whole is filmed out of sympathy for the oppressed from inside their elliptical world so that we lose the superficial certainty of the cause and message.

It's a powerful exercise on ignorance. It works - we leave it muddle- minded and uncertain ourselves.

This filmmaker, Rocha, his political leanings are unmistakable, but he's not complacent like Godard, he does not take easy shots. Even in this early film, he mulls over the difficulties, he leaves unreflective room; the radicalist's plot works but it's at the back of conniving and death. It pays off with more intimate, more personal value in Terra em Transe.