The Two Deaths of Quincas Wateryell (2010)

23 Sunday Jul 2017

Tags

Bahia, Brazil, Catch Up movie, Comedy, Corpse, Drama, Literary adaptation, Mariana Ximenes, Marieta Severo, Paulo José, Quincas Berro d'Água, Review, Sérgio Machado

Original title: Quincas Berro d’Água

D: Sérgio Machado / 101m

Cast: Paulo José, Mariana Ximenes, Marieta Severo, Vladimir Brichta, Flavio Bauraqui, Luis Miranda, Frank Menezes, Irandhir Santos

When you think about it, there are hundreds of thousands of English language movies to choose from, with thousands more being added each year. But there are even more foreign language movies, and picking one to watch can be daunting. Do you keep it safe by seeing foreign language movies that are awards winners, such as Toni Erdmann (2016), or do you opt for pot luck and take a corresponding chance? Taking the second option can be a reward in itself, and if you choose to see The Two Deaths of Quincas Wateryell, an adaptation of the novella, The Double Death of Quincas Water-Bray (1959) by Jorge Amado, then that choice will definitely be well made.

The plot concerns Quincas Wateryell (José), an old man whose friends have planned a surprise birthday party for him. But Quincas goes and does something unexpected: he misses the party and promptly dies (his first death). His body is found the next morning, and his family – his daughter Vanda (Ximenes), and son-in-law Leonardo (Brichta) – are contacted. While the news of her father’s death is obviously upsetting, there is another reason why the news is unwelcome: Quincas isn’t his real name, it’s Joaquim Soares da Cunha, and he disgraced his family by walking out on them to become a vagabond alcoholic. Having changed his name, only a handful of people are aware of his connection to Vanda, and she wants to keep it that way. Early preparations for the funeral are made, and some of Quincas’ friends – Curió (Menezes), Pé de Vento (Miranda), Pastinha (Bauraqui), and Cabo Martim (Santos) – hold a late night vigil over Quincas’ corpse.

The four men reminisce about the times they spent with Quincas, and they decide to give him what they regard as a proper send off: they take him for one last jaunt through town, going to the places they used to frequent, and treat it all as one big farewell party. Their intentions are simple, and the rest of the people who knew Quincas all join in, including his “girlfriend”, a club singer called Manuela (Severo). However, their having taken Quincas’ body is soon discovered, and the police become involved. It’s not long before they’re arrested and taken into custody, along with Quincas’ body. A hastily put together diversion allows the four friends (and Quincas) to escape from the police station, and they head for the docks where they plan to take him for one last boat trip. But a storm intervenes, and while the four friends, and Manuela, struggle to keep themselves afloat, Quincas’ final resting place suddenly seems more likely to be a watery one than one underground.

When Amado’s novella was first published, it was well received due to its indictment of Brazil’s class-ridden society, and The Two Deaths of Quincas Wateryell retains much of that original recrimination, though it becomes more of a comedic issue than a dramatic one. Vanda receives the news of her father’s death while in the company of two friends, and at first her shock is a natural reaction to such unexpected news. But it’s not long before she perceives her social standing as being under threat, and she takes steps to ensure her father, Joaquim, and Quincas, aren’t connected in any way. The same is true of her husband, Leonardo, who supports the fabrication that he ran off with the daughter of an Italian Comendatore and hasn’t been seen since. This stands him in good stead at work as well, with his colleagues taking more notice of him than before. Machado, working from his own script, starts off by making the couple unfeeling and duplicitous, but in a comedic light, as they’re unable to hide their conflicting emotions and their behaviour borders on being inappropriate. Even when Quincas’ relationship to them becomes more and more well known, they still can’t help themselves, and resort to misplaced pride to maintain their reputation in the local community.

What’s clever about Machado’s adaptation, though, is that he doesn’t continue with this attitude, and by the movie’s end, Vanda is a completely different person, wiser perhaps, and definitely changed, and free of the social insecurities she had before. How Machado achieves this is equally clever, and psychologically quite astute. He’s helped by a terrific performance by Ximenes, who provides each step of Vanda’s character arc with convincing details and honest emotional reactions. Less successful is Leonardo’s role in everything, as the longer the movie goes on, the less he’s involved, and he disappears from the final half an hour altogether. By then, of course, the focus is on getting Quincas to the boat trip, and Machado has to sacrifice tying up some of his script’s loose ends in favour of a dramatic denouement.

Along the way though, Machado achieves a lot of mileage out of Quincas’ “night out” with his friends. Taking a peek at the social underclass in Salvador da Bahia gives the director a chance to provide a colourful glimpse into a world of tradition and superstition, and which has a pronounced indifference to more conventional social practices (as evidenced by the religious ritual that Vanda dismisses as unnecessary because her family – not Quincas it’s important to note – are Catholics). It’s a lively, expressive environment, where people wear their hearts on their sleeves, and live with a passion for life that appears to be compromised amongst the people in Vanda and Leonardo’s social circle. The cast are all equally as expressive in their roles, with good performances throughout by Messrs Bauraqui, Miranda, Menezes, and Santos, but special mention must go to José, whose portrayal of Quincas is the bedrock of the movie, and an amazing feat in itself (at first you’ll be looking to see if he twitches or blinks or can be caught breathing; don’t bother, you won’t manage it). He also provides a witty, often poignant narration that’s delivered with sincerity and charm. Rounded off by immersive yet unshowy cinematography by Toca Seabra, it’s a movie that never flags for incident, and never undervalues its characters or their motives.

Rating: 8/10 – a vital and energetic comedy drama that tackles themes of social climbing, emotional disillusionment, and unwanted family legacies, The Two Deaths of Quincas Wateryell is a sturdy, engaging and ultimately winning movie that offers much for the casual viewer to enjoy; advertised more as a comedy, it has a depth to it that anchors much of the storyline, and shows that absurd moments involving a corpse don’t have to be purely a showcase for laughs. (21/31)

NOTE: There aren’t any English subtitles for the trailer below, but there shouldn’t be any problem understanding what’s going on.

Swiss Army Man (2016)

26 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Corpse, Daniel Kwan, Daniel Radcliffe, Daniel Scheinert, Drama, Manny, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Paul Dano, Review

D: Daniel Scheinert, Daniel Kwan / 97m

Cast: Paul Dano, Daniel Radcliffe, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Antonia Ribero, Timothy Eulich, Richard Gross

Stranded and alone on an island in the Pacific, Hank Thompson (Dano) has decided to end it all. He’s going to hang himself. But as he’s about to do so he spies a man’s body lying on the shoreline. Hoping the man (Radcliffe) is still alive, Hank forgets about killing himself and rushes to the man’s side. But he’s too late. The man looks as if he’s been in the water for too long, and it’s also not long before the accumulation of the gases inside his body begin to make themselves known. At first, Hank is annoyed and dismayed by the noises (and smells) coming from the man’s corpse, but when the tide starts to carry him back out to sea, Hank realises that the dead man’s flatulence is the answer to his being stranded on the island. Hank straddles the dead man’s back, points him away from the island and lets the escaping gases propel them both across the open ocean. And then he falls off…

Hank comes to on another beach, but this time he’s not on an island somewhere. He’s made it to US soil. And so has the dead man. Feeling a debt of gratitude to the dead man, Hank takes his corpse with him as he begins his trek back to civilisation. That first night he seeks shelter in a cave. The next morning, the corpse begins to speak, hesitantly at first, and then with increasing fluency. His conversation, though, is naïve and childlike, and Hank finds himself having to explain much about life and love and the nature of relationships. The corpse, who Hank names Manny, sees a picture of Hank’s “girlfriend”, Sarah (Winstead), on Hank’s mobile phone. He becomes obsessed with meeting her, so much so that to appease him, Hank constructs a hideout in the woods where he can teach Manny the best way to approach her, and how to talk to her without sounding stupid.

When they move on, they discover that they’ve been nearer to civilisation than either could have expected. And by chance they find themselves in Sarah’s back yard, where her daughter, Chrissy (Ribero) is playing. She’s curious about them at first, but Manny starts talking about being dead and then alive thanks to Hank. Chrissy becomes scared, and Sarah comes out to see what’s going on. When she sees Hank and Manny, she calls the police. In turn, EMT’s arrive to take away Manny’s body, and Hank’s dad (Gross), whom he’s distant from, also turns up. But Hank can’t bear to be separated from Manny, and so he makes one last desperate act of compassion, one that astounds everyone.

At one point in Swiss Army Man, Hank tells Manny that, “You can’t just say anything that comes into your head, that’s bad talking.” Judged against the things that Hank doesn’t say, it’s a self-serving rebuke that highlights just how uncomfortable he is with his own thoughts. If, as seems likely – and despite the best efforts of writers/directors Scheinert and Kwan to make it seem otherwise – that Hank is imagining Manny’s return to life as a way of coping with his own issues of being alone (and not just on the island), then Hank is arguing with himself. Or more accurately, attempting to persuade himself that he doesn’t have to be alone, and that he can find happiness in a relationship with Sarah. But where you might expect Manny to act as a deus ex machina, a source of resolution for Hank’s emotional fragility, what Scheinert and Kwan do in their script – and achieve thanks to two standout performances by Dano and Radcliffe – is make Manny the unbridled id to Hank’s more cautious super-ego.

It all makes for a fascinating and delicately balanced examination of one man’s lack of faith in himself. In the same way that we never learn how Hank came to be on the island in the first place, we never learn who Manny really is and why he came to be washed up there either. But it makes perfect sense if you accept that Manny’s physical self is real, and that his subsequent, miraculous ability to talk is due to Hank’s attempts to work out, or through, his own emotional distance from everyone. For Hank, Manny offers him a chance to examine his life and begin to make a difference. But Manny’s “approach” to life is the antithesis of how Hank approaches life; it’s no coincidence that Manny appears to be more “alive” than Hank.

By “resurrecting” Manny and making him Hank’s companion and eventual friend, Scheinert and Kwan have created a unique cinematic relationship. There’s a troubling sequence around the hour mark where Hank dresses up as Sarah in order to teach Manny what to say and how to behave around her. From this we can discern the exact nature of Hank’s relationship with Sarah, and also just how important it is to him. The sequence is troubling for the way in which Hank readily becomes Sarah, and readily accepts the off-kilter “courtship” that ensues. It all leads to a moment that is both uncomfortable for the audience and potentially cathartic for Hank, but he backs away at the last second, content still to grab defeat from the jaws of victory.

It’s been said elsewhere, but Swiss Army Man is definitely unlike any other movie you’ve ever seen. As if its basic premise isn’t bizarre enough, Scheinert and Kwan’s decision to include metaphysical and reality-bending aspects to the narrative makes it even more extraordinary, and so too is their decision not to shy away from the more singular side effects of being a corpse (“Manny, I think your penis is guiding us home”). As mentioned before, the movie benefits greatly from the performances of Dano and Radcliffe, both actors unsurprisingly committed to their roles and unsurprisingly affecting, and effective, as two halves of the same person. Dano’s offbeat acting style suits Hank immensely, his tremulous delivery and poignant facial expressions matched perfectly by Radcliffe’s mostly static gaze and conscience-free dialogue.

Aside from Dano and Radcliffe’s involvement, the movie has plenty else to recommend it, from the two Daniels’ sense of the absurdity of Hank’s situation and his decreasing mental stability, to the crisp, carefully composed cinematography of Larkin Seiple, a catchy indie soundtrack, and a deliciously tart sense of humour that helps alleviate the inherent darkness of the material. It’s not a perfect movie – amongst other things there are too many continuity problems for that – but it is one that brings its own rewards if you’re willing to go along with it. Scheinert and Kwan are to be congratulated for coming up with such an unusual, and diverting, cinematic experience.

Rating: 8/10 – a movie that defies easy categorisation – and for once, that’s a good thing – Swiss Army Man is likely to divide audiences, and be unapologetic for doing so; if you go with it then it’s an outlandish yet entertaining treat, but if you don’t then you’re missing out on one of the most original, inventive and surprising movies made in recent years, and one replete with enough fart jokes to keep anyone and everyone happy.