Down to Earth (1994) User Reviews (3)

Portugal and its former colonies

[hof-4 · 6/10 · 16 September 2022]

The scenario for most of the movie is the island of Fogo (Fire), in the southern end of the Cabo Verde (Cape Verde) archipelago. There is an active volcano near the center of the island. Most of the soil is solidified lava, used as material for houses. (which explains the movie's original title, Casa de Lava, House of Lava). The islands, 600 km west of the the Senegalese coast were a Portuguese colony until 1975. They played a role in the European slave trade and their present economy is precariously sustained by tourism and not much else.

As the movie begins, there are shots of an eruption of the volcano in 1954 and closeups of some of the personages to come. Then we jump to a construction site in Lisbon where Leão (Isaach de Bankolé) suffers an accident and ends up in coma in a hospital. Somebody (from his family?) mails an air ticket for him to return to Fogo. Mariana, a nurse, volunteers to assist the unconscious Leão during the trip. Her first impression of Fogo is a dusty, desolate airstrip; the pilots lend some help but seem eager to get away. Mariana manages to get Leão to the local hospital, formerly a leper colony. The hospital is in disarray and has very scant resources. Mariana's first hurdle is to locate Leão's family. Her interchanges with the locals are tense, and her questions are answered with a combination of silence, oblique non sequiturs and back questions and occasionally with violence. Communication is also impeded by their speaking Creole, that Mariana barely understands.

The positives: Acting is good all around. Cinematography is excellent but abuses trick lighting, which gives some scenes an artificial look. The negatives: Some characters are schematic or imperfectly fleshed out, and the pace is too slow. What is the film trying to show, if anything? Perhaps the indifference of Portugal (as any other colonial power) towards its ruthlessly exploited ex-colonies. Perhaps the European hubris that blocks Mariana from understanding the locals. Perhaps Mariana's dissatisfaction with her life in Lisbon that leads her to think of her island sojourn as an adventure. In the end, I was somewhat disappointed.

Burn, baby, burn

[tieman64 · 22 October 2011]

Portuguese director Pedro Costa directs "Down to Earth" (aka "House of Larva"). Like many of his other features - "Bones", "Vanda's Room", "Colossal Youth" - the film blends minimalism with surrealism, utilizes a non professional cast and is set in contemporary Cape Verde, an island off the North Western coast of Africa.

The film revolves around two characters, Mariana, a Portuguese nurse assigned to Cape Verde from Lisbon, and Leao, a black patient who awakes from a coma following a construction accident. Strangely, Leao resents being alive. He resents being back in Cape Verde, an enmity which Mariana senses and gradually begins to understand as the continuing legacy of both colonialism and the European slave trade begin to become apparent to her. It's a legacy that has scarred Cape Verde, and induced in Mariana a kind of coma or sickness akin to Leao's.

Throughout the film Costa repeatedly cuts to shots of festering volcanoes, their bubbling cisterns threatening to violently explode. Such shots are suggestive of the plight of Cape Verde's population (and migrant workers), all of whom are on the verge of economic extinction. The volcano's's bubbling larva also alludes to the populace's growing, mounting disdain, its pyroclasic flow pointing to some future, potential uprising. See Gillo Pontecorvo's "Burn!".

8/10 – Worth one viewing.

This beautiful little foreign film will leave you speechless

[dj_schweikert2007 · 9/10 · 27 April 2020]

Pedro Costa is the master of minimalism and for those who enjoy that form of filmmaking this will be a feast for the senses. He has made multiple wonderful films that fit the genre so I can not say this is his best but it is better than most films I have seen and I have seen a lot.

It is a beautiful film about a nurse and a volcano. Doesn't that description alone make you want to watch it? It sounds so simple and it is. And simple equals brilliance in the hands of the expert filmmaker Pedro Costa.

Be forewarned however that if you were not intrigued by the description about the nurse and the volcano then this may not be the film for you. Costa has a certain style that only some enjoy. But if you are one of the lucky few you will surely love this film.

There are many wonderful shots and the editing is brilliant. So often the camera does not cut away when in the hands of another filmmaker it would. Costa's distinct visual style astounds the senses. The cinematography alone is breathtaking let alone the beautiful story that will leave you misty eyed.

It is considered to be a remake of the 1943 film 'I Walked with the Zombie' although that one is considered to be a horror film and this effort is far superior. It is a drama and it is an improvement upon the earlier film. This is my favorite European film of the nineties.