Inhalt
"Mit dem Brasilien unter Fernando Collor de Melo (Anfang der neunziger Jahre) beschäftigt sich Walter Salles, eines der jungen Regie-Talente im Land. Der Titel des Film ist sein Thema: TERRA ESTRANGEIRA. Ein fremdes Land: das ist Brasilien für Salles. Zu Beginn des Films sieht man den neuen Präsidenten im Fernsehen. Er beginnt den Menschen das Geld wegzunehmen. Eine Zeit der Kälte bricht an, die Salles unter anderem durch das Schwarz-Weiss seiner Bilder reflektiert - für brasilianische Farben ist da kein Platz mehr. Hauptfigur ist ein junger Mann, der seinen Traum verwirklichen will, einmal ins Land seiner Väter zu fahren, Spanien. San Sebastian ist für ihn die Methapher für diesen Traum geworden. Er schliddert ahnungslos in ziemlich kriminelle Dinge hinein, kann zwar nach Portugal reisen, verwickelt sich aber dann immer mehr ins mafiahafte Milieu. Die letzte halbe Stunde, da fährt er mit einer Frau im Auto an der portugisieschen Küste entlang nach San Sebastian (das er nicht erreichen wird), ist außerordentlich dicht erzählt und von einer großen Qualität der Inszenierung. Da wird die soziale Milieustudie des Beginns zu einem road movie, das die Verlorenheit des Helden abbildet. Salles' Figuren sind einsam, ohne Bindungen, ohne Zukunft. TERRE ESTRANGEIRA ist ein Film, der gegen das normale, bunte touristische Brasilien-Bild gedreht wurde. Walter Salles hat beim Festival von Sundance eine Drehbuchförderung erhalten, Grundstock für ein neues Projekt."
Klaus Eder Je näher man sich die Filme anschaut, desto größer werden die Unterschiede. Lateinamerikanisches Tagebuch. In: Filmbulletin Nr. 1 1996, S. 59
"TERRA ESTRANGEIRA ist ein Film über eine Generation, die von Krisenzeiten heimgesucht wurde und in einem Land resigniert, das selbst nach seiner eigenene Identität sucht.
Der Film hat einen realen Hintergrund, Brasilien im März 1990: Fernando Collor - der erste gewählte Präsident nach fast zwanzig Jahren Militärregierung - nimmt seinen Platz ein und verkündet einen Wirtschaftsplan, der als erste Maßnahme die Ersparnnise der Brasilianer einfriert. Das ganze Land befindet sich in einem Chaos. Mehr als 800.000 junge Brasilianer verlassen ihr Land.
TERRA ESTRANGEIRA folgt Paco, einem jungen Mann Anfang Zwanzig, Sohn einer spanischen Immigrantin, einer bescheidenen Näherin, die in einer verfallenen Gegend von São Paulo lebt. Paco ist voller Träume und hofft, später in einem anderen Land zu sterben. Da ist auch noch die Geschichte von Alex, einer 'wirtschaftsflüchtigen' jungen Brasilianerin, die in Lissabon lebt und die harte Realität des dortigen Landes erfährt. Rassismus, kulturelle Differenzen, die Hoffnungslosigkeit einer ganzen Generation zwischen Süd und Nord und die damit verbundene Entwurzelung der Menschen sind die Themen von TERRA ESTRANGEIRA."
11. Tage des unabhängigen Films Ausburg 1996, S III, 23
"Dora eine ehemalige Lehrerin, verdient sich ihren Lebensunterhalt als Briefeschreiberin für Analphabeten. Jeden Morgen baut sie in der Bahnhofshalle von Rio de Janeiro ihren Stand auf und wartet auf Kunden. Um sie herum sammeln sich Menschen aus dem ganzen Land; die einen in der Hoffnung, mit verschollen Angehörigen Kontakt aufzunehmen, andere um einen Liebesbrief zu schreiben oder die Härte ihrer Existenz zu beklagen. Pro Brief verlangt Dora einen Real, und zwei Real, wenn sie den Brief zur Post bringen muß.
Eiserne Routine bestimmt Doras Alltag, in dem sie nur drei Aufenthaltsorte kennt: die kleine Wohnung, in der sie allein lebt, den Bahnhof und den überfüllten Vorstadtzug, mit dem sie zwischen Arbeit und zu Hause pendelt. Ihre einzige Freundin ist Irene, eine Nachbarin, alleinstehend wie sie selbst. Abends lesen die beiden Frauen die Briefe, die Dora geschrieben hat, und entscheiden gemeinsam, was in den Papierkorb und was - irgendwann einmal - in den Briefkasten kommt.
Doch plötzlich tritt eine dramatische Veränderung in Doras Leben. Vor ihren Augen ereignet sich ein tödlicher Unfall, dessen Opfer eine Frau wird, für die sie noch kurz zuvor einen Brief geschrieben hatte. Er war an den Mann, der Kundin gerichtet, der sie verlassen hatte. Sie wollte ihn zu einem Wiedersehen bewegen, er sollte seinen Sohn kennenlernen...
Der neunjährige Josué ist nun allein. Es gibt in Rio keine Angehörigen, es gibt niemanden, der sich seiner annimmt. Ziellos streift er zwischen Reisenden und Passanten herum, verbringt seine Tage und Nächte in der Bahnhofshalle - bis Dora den Entschluß faßt, auf ihn zuzugehen.
Doras Interesse ist anfangs nicht selbstlos. Sie erkennt die Chance, schnell zu Geld zu kommen, wenn sie ihn zur Adoption an eine der zweifelhaften Vermittlungsstellen verkauft. Dann aber besinnt sie sich und beschließt, sich mit dem Jungen auf die Suche nach dem Vater zu begeben. Die beiden treten eine Reise ins Unbekannte an, die sie bald in Bussen, bald in Lastwagen tief ins Innere des Landes - und immer enger zueinanderführt."
48. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin, 1998, S. 76"CENTRAL DO BRASIL ist nach TERRA ESTRANGEIRA der zweite Spielfilm von Walter Salles und kreist wie dieser um die Themen Migration und Identitätssuche. Fernanda Montenegro, spielt die ehemalige Lehrerin Dora, die sich in der Bahnhofshalle von Rio de Janeiro ihren Lebensunterhalt damit verdient, für einen Real Briefe für Analphabeten zu schreiben. Abends in ihrer kleinen Vorstadtwohnung nimmt sie die Briefe gemeinsam mit ihrer Freundin Irene (Marilia Pêra) auseinander, ein Großteil davon landet im Papierkorb oder in einer Schublade. Eine Schublade voller Geschichten und eine davon wird Doras Leben entscheidend beeinflussen. Eines Tages bricht in die Routine aus, Bahnhof, überfüllten Vorstadtzug und Wohnung ein Neunjähriger namens Josué (Vinicius de Oliveira) ein. Gerade noch hat seine Mutter Dora einen Brief an den Vater Josués diktiert, der im fernen Nordosten Brasilien lebt und seinem Sohn, den er nie gesehen hat, kennenlernen soll, da wird sie vor Augen Doras Opfer eines Unfalls und Josué bleibt allein zurück. Dora, von Fernanda Montenegro als unwirsche, gleichgültige und so gar nicht liebenswerte alternde Dame gespielt, versucht zunächst egoistisch, den Kleinen loszuwerden und an eine Adoptionsstelle zu verkaufen. Doch schließlich machen sie sich gemeinsam auf die Reise in den Nordosten. Eine bewegende Reise, die die Protagonisten in sparsamen Bildern ganz langsam zueinander führt und für jeden von ihnen die Suche nach der eigenen Identität darstellt, so wie sie auch für das Land Brasilien die Suche nach seinen Wurzeln bedeutet. Mit den überragenden Hauptdarstellern, die es murrend und streitend schaffen, die Sympathien der Zuschauer auf sich zu ziehen, ist dieser Film einer der schönsten des Festivals."
Sonja Hofmann: Goldener Bär für Brasilien. In: Matices. Zeitschrift zu Lateinamerika, Spanien und Portugal, Nr. 17 Frühjahr 1998, S. 44"Der erste lateinamerikanische Film, der auf einer Berlinale den Hauptpreis gewann, sollte trotz der wenigen Produktionen, die aus Brasilien unsere Kinos erreichten (BYE BYE BRASIL, TIETA DO BRASIL), eine solide Marktlücke bedienen können, den Walter Salles' Odyssee von Rio de Janeiro in den Sertão im Norden des Landes hat alles, was ein gutes Roadmovie auszeichnet: ungebändigte Reise- und Erfahrungslust, ein ungleiches Paar, das sich während des Trips einander annähert, eine attraktive Scope-Kamera, die unbekannte Regionen Brasiliens einfängt, einen glaubwürdigen dramatischen Konflikt, wunderbar spielende Hauptdarsteller und den Sog des unbestechlichen Blicks auf ein Land, das seine Wurzeln verloren hat.
Schon der Ausgangspunkt lenkt die Story unbeirrbar in Richtung Aufbruch: Szenen aus dem Treiben auf dem Hauptbahnhof von Rio sind geschickt gemischt mit der Arbeit der ehemaligen Lehrerin Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) erhielt in Berlin den Silbernen Bären als beste Hauptdarstellerin), die Briefe für Analphabeten schreibt, sie willkürlich sortiert und (vielleicht nie) abschickt, und in der Vorstadt mit der herzlichen Hure Irene die Botschaften beäugt und kommentiert. Als einer ihrer Kundinnen vor dem Bahnhof überfahren wird, will Dora deren urplötzlich verwaisten Sohn erst loswerden, besinnt sich aber, raubt Josué aus einer zweifelhaften Adoptionsstele und tritt mit ihm den langen Weg zu seinem Vater an, der irgendwo im riesigen Sertão arbeitet - und sich in Vergessenheit säuft.
Die äußerst spannende Reise von Dora und Josué, während der sie Trucker, Raststätten, religiöse Feiern, mythisch umwehte Felsen, Märkte, moderne Sozialwohnungssiedlungen für die Kinder der Pioniere, Handwerker und Händler kennenlernen und sich erfindungsreich ums Geldverdienen bemühen, ist ein Glanzstück im Genre Roadmovie: präzise, pointiert, problembewußt und ohne Wiederholungen auf die Identitätssuche einer alten Frau und des Jungen ausgerichtet, mitten in einer vaterlosen Gesellschaft, die an Theo Angelopoulos' Meisterwerk LANDSCHAFT IM NEBEL erinnert. Der Humor des humanistischen Film wie bei dem ähnlich strukturierten GUANTANAMERA die verdiente Aufmerksamkeit sichern: zusätzlich zum Berlinale-Preis-Bonus."
ger (Hans Gerhold) in: Blickpunkt Film Nr. 10 1998, S. 51-52"Oh, Jesus! Nach zwei Wochen voller Sex, Gewalt und Unterhaltung gewinnt ein christlicher Erweckungsfilm den Goldenen Bären der Berlinale. CENTRAL DO BRASIL von dem brasilianischen Regisseur Walter Salles erzählt mit viel Gefühl und schlichten Bildern, wie ein kleiner Junge auf der Suche nach seinem Vater Freundschaft mit der ehemaligen Lehrer in Dora schließt. Dabei handelt die in die Jahre gekommene Frau aus schlechtem Gewissen, weil sie das Kind an eine Adoptionsstelle verkaufen wollte.
Was auf dem Hauptbahnhof Rio de Janeiros beginnt, entwickelt sich zum religiösen Roadmovie. Am Ziel entpuppt sich der vermißte Vater als reuiger Sünder, die Lehrerin läßt sich zu einem besseren Leben bekehren, und überhaupt haben alle beteiligten Figuren biblische Namen.
Weil Konversion und viele Tränen offenbar der Jury sehr gefallen haben, bekam CENTRAL DO BRASIL auch noch den ökumenischen Filmpreis zuerkannt, und Fernanda Montenegro wurde für die Rolle der Dora der Silberne Bär als beste Darstellerin zugesprochen.
(...)
"Sehnsüchtige Briefe, ungeduldige Briefe, wütende Briefe, überschwengliche Briefe: Tag für Tag bringt Dora herzergreifende Worte zu Papier. Während im Hintergrund die Massen zu den Zügen hetzen und die Central do Brasil in einer gigantischen Kakophonie widerhallt, schreibt sie mit ungerührter Miene nieder, was die Kunden ihr so diktieren: Manche quellen fast über vor Liebe und Lust und entlocken der pensionierten Lehrerin ein müdes Mundwinkelzucken. Andere senden höfliche Worte an ihre Eltern im fernen Pernambuco. Wieder andere tauchen mit ihrem Sohn an der Hand auf und wollen dem Vater des Kindes schreiben, »diesem Arschloch, diesem Säufer«, der vor Jahren aus Rio abgehauen ist und sich nie wieder gemeldet hat. Am nächsten Tag kommen sie an und wollen den ganzen Brief umschrieben. Wie gut, daß die abgebrühte Dora die Post ihre analphabetischen Kundschaft nicht so ernst nimmt. Viele Briefe gelangen gar nicht in den Briefkasten, sondern werden in der 'Fegefeuerschublade' zwischengelagert. Für Dora und ihre Freundin Irene - beide undefinierbaren Alters und alleinstehend - gehört es nämlich zu den kleinen Vergnügungen des Alltags, Briefe, die sie für unsinnig halten, auszusortieren. Der Hilferuf von Ana an den verschollenen Vater ihres Sohnes Josué fällt auch in dies Kategorie. Wer ist schon so blöd, einem Trinker hinterherzutrauern? Und wer so blöd ist, dieser unterkühlten Geschäftemacherin zu vertrauen? Der neunjährige Josué ist mißtrauisch. »Woher weißt du, daß sie die Briefe abschicken wird?« fragt er seine Mutter. Wenige Minuten später ist Ana tot. Ein Bus hat sie überfahren. Unter Schock stehend, irrt der Junge durch Bahnhofsgelände. Am nächsten Morgen nimmt er seine Kraft zusammen und geht zu Doras Stand. »Ich will einen Brief an meinen Vater schreiben!«- »Hast du Geld?«.
Josué und Dora: Sie sind nicht gerade ein Traumpaar, der trotzige kleine Bengel und die verhärmte alte Schachtel. Und gerade daraus erwachsen das Spannungsfeld und die Intensität von Walter Salles' Film CENTRAL DO BRASIL Die beiden sind sich alles andere als sympathisch. aber schlittern in eine Zwangsgemeinschaft hinein. Doras Leben ist festgefahren, Josué steht vor dem Nichts. Das einzige, woran er sich klammert, ist die Hoffnung, seinen Vater zu finden. Deswegen rückt er Dora auf die Pelle, bis die ihn genervt mit nach Hause nimmt. Josués Anwesenheit in dem spartanischen Vorstadtsilo ist Dora unheimlich. Er schnüffelt nicht nur herum und entdeckt auf Anhieb die 'Fegefeuerschublade'. Er stellt auch unbehagliche Fragen: »Wo ist dein Mann? Wo sind deine Kinder? Hast du wenigsten einen Hund?« Das tut weh. Am nächsten Tag verkauft Dora ihn an eine dubiose Adoptionsagentur. Irene ahnt entsetzt, woher ihre Freundin das Geld für den neuen Fernseher hat: »Alles hat seine Grenze, Dora.« In der Nacht liegt Dora im Bett und hört die Züge vorbei rattern, unerbittlich, einen nach dem anderen. Am Tag darauf entführt sie Josué aus der Agentur. Schweißgebadet sitz Dora neben ihm im Taxi. Dann geht es mit dem Bus Richtung Nordosten, um den Brief an Josués Vater zu übergeben.
CENTRAL DO BRASIL, der auf der Berlinale mit dem goldenen Bären ausgezeichnet wurde, erzählt von Grenzüberschreitungen und einer rastlosen und beharrlichen Suche. Ein inneres und äußeres Roadmovie. In den Großstadtsequenzen dominiert die Nahperspektive mit geringer Tiefenschärfe und Weitsicht. Alle rempeln aneinander vorbei. Hektische und verhuschte Horizontalbewegungen, ein permanenter Geräuschpegel, harte Schnitte und staubige Farben. Bei der Busfahrt in den Sertão beginnt der Blickwinkel sich zu weiten, die Einstellungen gewinnen an Ruhe. Gleichzeitig strahlt die Landschaft etwas Karges und Verlorenes aus. Die Sonne brennt auf Raststätten hernieder, die wie unmotiviert in der Ödnis stehen. Hier und da säumen Zäune, Türmchen mit Heiligenstatuen oder monotone Fertighaussiedlungen den Weg. Ist es möglich, irgendwo anzukommen und etwas zu finden, wenn alles so aussieht, als habe der Zufall es dorthin geschubst. Der freundliche älter LKW-Fahrer, der Dora und Josué mitnimmt, hat sich offenbar damit abgefunden, den Rest seines Lebens auf der Straße zu verbringen. Als Dora sich ein Herz faßt und auf ihn zugeht, sucht er panisch das Weite. Andere dagegen sind ängstlich darum bemüht, Ihr Revier abzustecken. Grandios ist die Szene, als Josué sich der Hütte nähert, wo sein Vater angeblich wohnen soll. Zuerst verfolgt die Kamera wie im Vogelflug seinen Bewegungen. Josué läuft, läuft immer schneller auf sein Ziel zu. Plötzlich entgegengesetzte Perspektive. Ein etwa gleichaltriger Junge tritt vom Haus ins Bild und schreitet langsam die Zaunpalisaden ab. Die beiden vollführen spiegelverkehrt die gleiche Bewegung, taxieren sich durch die Freiräume zwischen den Holzstäben, mustern sich in stummer Skepsis. Brüder oder Konkurrenten? Aus dieser wortlosen Szene spricht ein intuitives Wissen um die Ambivalenz, die das Herausfinden der Wahrheit in sich birgt. »Dein Vater ist nicht die Person, die du denkst«, warnt Dora den Jungen.
Aber ist Dora selbst die Person, für die sie sich hält, Fernanda Montenegro , der großen alten Dame des brasilianischen Kinos, gelingt es wunderbar, Doras Metamorphosen nach außen zu tragen (Silberner Bär für die beste Darstellerin!). Die Montenegro ist die schrappige Kleinunternehmerin von der 'Central do Brasil'. Sie ist auch das junge, alte Mädchen, das unsicher vor dem Spiegel steht und zum ersten Mal seit Ewigkeiten Lippenstift auflegt. Sie ist die strenge Gouvernante, die Josué ausschimpft, weil er Kekse geklaut hat - und die selbst fünf Minuten später das halbe Ladensortiment in der Tasche mitgehen läßt. Sie ist die genervte Babysitterin und die Hilflose, die sich zusammengerollt im Schoß des kleinen Jungen wiederfindet. Unspektakuläre, aber vielsagende Gesten, kleine Reibereien, bei denen unversehens das Eis bricht. Die hemmungslose Menschlichkeit, die keine Sentimentalitäten scheut, aber nie in Kitsch verfällt macht CENTRAL DO BRASIL zu einem so bewegenden Film.
Walter Salles erzählt eine archetypische Geschichte so lebendig, als würden Josué und Dora sie Schritt für Schritt neu erfinden. Das Thema - die Suche nach dem Vater, nach der eigenen Herkunft, nach sich selbst - ist wohl so alt wie die Menschheit. Für Lateinamerika, den kolonisierten Kontinent, hat es jedoch eine besondere Bedeutung.
Ob DIE REISE von Fernando E. Solanas (Argentinien 1992) oder der ebenfalls auf der Berlinale gezeigte EINE CHRYSANTHEME EXPLODIERT IN CINCOESQUINAS (Argentinien 1997). Die Frage der Wurzeln, der Identität treibt viel FilmemacherInnen um. Auch der vorherige Spielfilm von Walter Salles umkreiste dieses Thema. In TERRA ESTRANGEIRA (FREMDES LAND, 1995) haut ein junger Mann aus San Paulo ab. Eigentlich will er ins Baskenland, wo seine Vorfahren herstammen. Er strandet jedoch in Lissabon, inmitten einer Lebenshungrigen, verzweifelten, gewalttätigen und orientierungslosen Schar von Einwandern aus den ehemaligen Kolonien. Im Gegensatz zum melodramatischen Ausgang von TERRA ESTRANGEIRA ist der Unterton von CENTRAL DO BRASIL wesentlich optimistischer. »Dies hier ist das Ende der Welt«, meint ein junger Mann, dem sie in einem winzigen Dorf begegnen. Aber ausgerechnet da ergeben sich unverhoffte Neuanfänge."
Bettina Bremme in: Lateinamerika Nachrichten, Nr. 285, März 1988, S. 37 - 39"Dora ist Gott. Jedenfalls benimmt sie sich so. Eigentlich aber ist Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) nur eine pensionierte Lehrerin, die ihre Rente aufbessert, indem sie am Zentralbahnhof von Rio de Janeiro den vielen Menschen, die das nicht selbst können, ihre Briefe schreibt und sie anschließend zur Post bringt. Jedenfalls verspricht sie das. Statt dessen nimmt sie die Briefe aber mit nach Hause, wo sie mit Freundin Irene genüßlich auseinandergenommen werden. Welcher Brief verschickt wird, wer mit wem in Kontakt treten darf, welchen Gang das Schicksal nimmt, hängt von der Tagesform und den küchenpsychologischen Fähigkeiten der beiden ab.
Aber das Schicksal wird nicht nur von postalischen Gegebenheiten bestimmt wird, sondern manchmal auch von einem Kreisel: Der fällt dem neunjährigen Josué (Vinicius de Oliveira) aus der Hand, weswegen in Verkettung unglücklicher Zufälle seine Mutter überfahren wird. Nun bleibt ihm nur sein Vater, den er nie gesehen hat, aber an den seine Mutter gerade einen Brief hat schreiben lassen - von Dora, die prompt zur ersten Anlaufstelle der frischgebackenen Halbwaise wird. Dora ist davon gar nicht begeistert.
Es kommt, wie es kommen muß. Die knarzige Alte und der selbstbewußte Kleine geraten aneinander. Schließlich landen sie mehr unfreiwillig auf der Straße und beginnen eine Odyssee auf dem brasilianischen Land, mißverstehen sich in die Pleite, klauen in einem christlichen Lebensmittelladen, treffen einen netten Trucker, spielen kurz das Erfolgsmodell Kleinfamilie durch, um schließlich irgendwo anzukommen und nicht nur geographisch - wie das in Road Movies halt so sein muß.
Es ist eine alte Geschichte, die erzählt wird. Die Annäherung über die Generationen hinweg, die rauhe Schale, die es zu knacken gilt. Neu ist bestenfalls die Konstellation, daß der ältere Part eine Frau ist. Die aber hat ganz und gar nichts von einer netten, plätzchenbackenden Großmutter, sondern ist ebenso knorrig und mißmutig und zerknautscht im Gesicht wie die diversen Walter Matthaus der Filmhistorie vor ihr. Überhaupt sind beide Teile dieses obskuren Pärchens nicht unbedingt sympathisch, auch wenn ihnen unsere Sympathien gehören. Selbst in den Momenten, in denen sich die beiden annähern, bleibt die Regie von Walter Salles so lakonisch, geben sich die Charaktere so widerborstig, daß auch dann kein Kitschverdacht aufkommt, wenn ein Kopf auf einer Schulter liegt oder Dora gesteht, daß sie im gleichen Alter wie Josué ihre Mutter verlor.
Der Weg führt in einen Wallfahrtsort. Dort wartet zwar nicht der Vater, aber wieder einmal ein Brief. Zum guten Schluß schreibt Dora zum ersten Mal seit Jahren wieder einen Brief für sich selbst. Jetzt endlich hat auch sie eine Geschichte. Denn es gibt auf dieser Welt mindestens so viele Geschichten, wie es Briefe gibt."
Thomas Winklerin. Die Tageszeitung (Berlin) 16.2.1998"Nachdem seine Mutter von einem Bus überfahren wurde, kümmert sich niemand mehr um den zehnjähriger Josué: Die Chancen des Jungen, allein in Rio de Janeiro zu überleben, sind minimal. Seine einzige Hoffung ist Dora, eine alternde Ex-Lehrerin von zweifelhafter Moral, die in Rios Bahnhof für die zahlreichen Analphabeten Briefe schreibt. Mit ihrer Hilfe will Josué seinen vor Jahren verschwundenen Vater finden, der irgendwo im Hinterland leben soll.
Anfangs will Dora nichts von dem lästigen Jungen wissen, doch der läßt nicht locker, und schließlich macht sich das ungleiche Paar auf eine Reise ins Unbekannte …
Gegensätze ziehen sich an: Während Fernanda Montenegro als Brasiliens bedeutendste Schauspielerin gilt, ist Vinicius de Oliveira nur ein Schuhputz-Junge, dem der Regisseur Walter Salles zufällig am Flughafen von Rio begegnet ist. So ungewöhnlich wie die beiden Akteure ist dann auch die Paarung der von ihnen verkörperten Protagonisten: Hier Dora, die zynische Briefeschreiberin, die willkürlich mit dem Schicksal ihrer Klienten spielt, indem sie einige Botschaften abschickt und andere nicht – dort Josué, ein mittelloses Straßenkind, das sich, nur eine Handbreit vom eigenen Untergang entfernt, die naive Kraft des Hoffens bewahrt.
Mit CENTRAL STATION porträtiert der durch seine Dokumentarfilme bekannte gewordene Salles ein von Tristesse und hohler Religiosität geprägtes Land, in dem ein Menschenleben wenig zählt. Seine Bilder einer seelenlosen, von Kriminalität beherrschten Stadt kontrastieren im Verlauf des Films mit der Ödnis des kargen Hinterlands, doch diesmal beläßt es Salles nicht beim Dokumentieren: Dora und Josué verleihen dem Road-Movie nicht nur emotionale Tiefe, die brillanten Darbietungen von Montenegro und Oliveira (offenbar ein Naturtalent) verbinden auch die einzelnen Stationen der Reise und ringen dem trostlosen Bild eines Landes im Umbruch schließlich sogar ein Stück Hoffnung ab.
Fazit: Zwischen Hoffnung und Verzweiflung: Leben und Überleben in Brasilien
Rico Pfirstinger(focus-online)(http://db.focus.de:8080/DF/DFA/dfa-deta.hbs?myrec=190)"A sensitive art film of the old school, Walter Salles' CENTRAL STATION is a melancholy Brazilian road movie shot with gently stressed cultural commentary. Strongly reminiscent of the work of Vittorio De Sica, with whom current producer Arthur Cohn worked several times, this handsomely crafted study of a search for family connections and , in a large sense, personal and national hope, doesn't quite manage the climatic emotional catharsis at which it aims, but will involve and move most viewers nonetheless. Well received at its Sundance world preem and set for competition in Berlin, this will be a solid specialized attraction for discerning audiences internationally.
Salles' first feature, the 1995 FOREIGN LAND was one of the top Brazilian pics in recent years and played widely on the fest circuit. A former documaker, helmer here sets a highly intimate story about the often troubled journey in transition. While well judged and credibly played, the film drops dollops of meaning that are, if anything, rather too carefully and gingerly planted, leaving nothing to chance in a work that al least partly means to be open to accident and the randomness of human experience.
Vibrant, unusual opening sees Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) , a dour, disagreeable-looking older woman, writing letters for a succession of customers at a little stand in Rio de Janeiro's teeming central railway station. Among Dora's patrons, who are members of Brazil's poor and illiterate class, is a woman whose 9-year-old son Josué (Vinicius de Oliveira) , wants to meet the father he has never known. But after dictating two letters to the father, who is said to live somewhere far to the north, the mother is struck by a bus and killed, leaving the stranded Josué to wander aimlessly around the train station.
Although Dora is the opposite of a kindly, maternal old woman - she considers most of her customers 'trash' and systematically throws out most of the letters she writes even through she's been paid to compose and mail them - she feels she has no choice but to take the boy home, at least for a night. Doras lives in a cramped apartment overlooking the train tracks, and she often spends her evenings with her neighbor friend Irene (Marilia Pêra) , going through the purgatory drawer of undelivered letters and debating which, if any, to actually send.
To resolve Josué's dilemma, Dora places him with people who purportedly specialize in finding foreign adoptive parents. But when Irene tells her that their real business is selling kids who are then killed for their organs, Dora daringly rescues Josué and whisks him on board a bus.
Even though Dora turns out to have a speck of feeling for her charge due to the fact that her own mother died when she was his age, she has no intention of assuming true responsibility for Josué. Trying but failing to ditch him at a roadside stop, she hitches a ride for them on a truck driven by a religious man who surprisingly inspires Dora's latent romantic yearnings.
Left once again on their own devices, Dora and Josué make their way farther across the scrubby, increasingly dusty landscape on a truck carrying white-garbed worshippers. After one attempt to locate the boy's father goes for naught, the film delivers its biggest set piece as the pair find themselves in the middle of an enormous rural religious pilgrimage. Penniless, Dora thinks she's reached the end of the road, but in an entrepreneurial burst, Josué suggests that she begin writing letters again, and Dora receives a windfall from the devout who are anxious to send missives to saints.
Journey's end comes at an enormous mass housing development on the new economic frontier, and even if Dora and Josué don't archive the sought-after resolution to their quest, they find a viable one that might suffice. Understated ending appears intended to create more of an emotional to create more of an emotional swell than it does, as it seems both muted and overly calculated.
But then, the entire film feels a tad too cautious and minutely controlled. The land-voyage format and entirely on-location lending approach pay homage to the neo-realistic / Cinema Novo tradition, but Salles' fastidious style doesn't allow any spontaneity to creep into his exquisitely composed frames and concentrated dramatic scenes. As a living mural of life across a certain section of Brazil, pic hardly lacks for interesting things to observe and absorb, but its somewhat airless quality prevents it from fully realizing its potential in its hallowed genre.
All the same, the film is affecting and pointedly unsentimental in its portrayal of the often grudging relationship between the gruff, callused Dora and Josué, who only abstractly grasps the importance of the search they've undertaken and doesn't realize, as the audience does, that its result will determine whether he will join the ranks of the country's millions of street kids or manage to get a shot in life through a family connection.
Long one of Brazil's leading stage and screen actresses, Montenegro carries the film superbly with her portrait of gritty strength being worn down to a state of tattered vulnerability, while newcomer de Oliveira, a shoeshine boy who won the role over 1.000 other aspirants, is engagingly natural and happily doesn't beg for viewer sympathy.
On a precise but restrained symbolic level CENTRAL STATION speaks in a curiously hopeful manner about the possibilities for Brazil's future, suggesting that the deep scars left by the social ills of the recent past might somehow be survived and surmounted by a creative union of the old and new Brazils.
Film is immaculate technically, with outstanding widescreen lensing by Walter Carvalho. Script by João Emanuel Carneiro and Marcos Bernstein, based on an idea by Salles, who grants from the Sundance Institute and NHK as well as from the French Ministry of Culture."
Todd McCarthy in: Variety 9. - 15. Februar 1998There's an unlikely race heating up in this year's lackluster Oscar derby: best foreign language film. Italy's offering, Roberto Benigni's LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL, is already an art-house hit. Enter the Brazilian contender: CENTRAL STATION.
Walter Salles Jr.'s touching road pic recalls John Cassavetes' 1980 melodrama, GLORIA (currently being remade with Sharon Stone in the title role). It's about the unlikely kinship between a mature woman and a young boy forced on the lam.
Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) writes letters for Rio de Janeiro's illiterate amid the city's chaotic Central Station. One day, she meets Ana (Soia Lira) and her son Josue (Vinicius de Oliveira).
Ana dictates a melancholy letter to the boy's distant dad seeking reconciliation. The embittered Dora assumes the father is a drunk and doesn't mail the letter.
When Ana dies in a bus crash, Dora takes Josue in. No softy, she sells the boy to an adoption agency and buys a new TV. When she discovers the 'agency' is harvesting kids' organs for foreign recipients, Dora kidnaps Josue.
Fleeing from the fake adoption ring, Dora escorts Josue to his father's last known address. Like Salles' previous film, FOREIGN LAND, which played the Anthology Film Archives last year, CENTRAL STATION becomes a road movie tracing the landscape of the human heart.
Dora's flight across Brazil's harsh interior forces the frustrated middle-aged woman to confront her family legacy. Like Josue, she is an emotional orphan. She comes to face her drunken father's abandonment of the family; her mother's early death; and her own inability to fill the void with romantic love, alcohol or the fervent Catholicism the duo encounters on the road.
Montenegro, a Brazilian star who appeared briefly as a busybody in FOUR DAYS IN SEPTEMBER, delivers an unsentimental, complex and moving performance. Her Dora is guardian and orphan, Madonna and child. She restores Josue to his family; he restores her hope.
CENTRAL STATION, in turn, restores our faith in the power of human relationships - and authentic movies - to help us look at the world anew, as if after a sudden, cleansing downpour.
Thelma Adams (New York Post) (http://www.nypostonline.com/reviews/movies/6400.htm)"Sony is pumping hard for Walter Salles Jr.'s Brazilian tearjerker CENTRAL STATION to garner some serious Oscar nominations the way IL POSTINO did a few years back. And they might get their druthers, but my guess is that CENTRAL STATION—which is too realistically involved with the facts of poverty in Brazil on one hand, and too blithely sentimental on the other—will entrance few members of the complacent Academy or art-filmgoers. It may have won big this year at Berlin, but Salles' film should fool no one into thinking it is profound, arty, revelatory, or provocative.
The structure of the film is so familiar you could be forgiven for thinking you thought it up yourself: a curmudgeonly old fart is forced into close quarters with an orphaned kid, and is redeemed by their slowly evolving friendship. Didn't Neil Simon do this a few times with Walter Matthau? Beautifully textured and detailed, Salles' film is often convincing, but right from the start it's headed into a narrative brick wall you can clearly see in the distance. Along the way, Salles keeps his cards in full view: You can see the artificial, heartwarming purpose behind every scene as the movie steadfastly approaches sniffly salvation.
Salles knows what he's doing, both in terms of audience manipulation and evocative filmmaking—it's just that he's not very subtle doing it. CENTRAL STATION focuses in its first frames on Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) , a withered, Matthau-like crone whose business it is to sit in Rio's Central Station and write letters for the city's large illiterate population. This is a marvelously evocative device, full of its own drama and human potential, but Salles stacks the deck. Dora is a grumpy misanthrope who tears up the letters she finds uninteresting, so we know the whole film is gearing up to turn her into a warmhearted, appreciative mensch.
And the contrivances pile up. Dora writes a letter for a single mother she perceives to be a masochistic fool, and then the woman steps in front of a bus leaving her 9-year-old son (Vinicius de Oliveira) alone in Rio (where, apparently, they execute shoplifters and leave orphans to wander helplessly). Slowly, Dora warms up and feels responsible for the boy, especially after selling him to a suspicious station guard and then thinking better of it. After Dora kidnaps him back, the two venture out into the country in search of the boy's negligent father, a trip that promises to be at least as pointless as it is maddeningly cursed with misfortune. At first they hate each other, and then, realizing they essentially have only each other, they bond and all that crap.
Salles paints the Brazilian landscapes, urban and rural, with a broad, effective brush, but CENTRAL STATION is a film made not for Brazilians but for American audiences with a tourist jones. The movie's main strength is Montenegro, a lionized actress in Brazil whose unkempt demeanor and I've-seen-the- bowels-of-the-world countenance are unforgettable. (De Oliveira, on the other hand, is a snotty dud.) To add insult to a cinephile's injury, Salles mixes in huge tracts of supposedly original music that is filched, virtually note for note, from Georges Delerue's score for Bertolucci's THE CONFORMIST. There isn't much in CENTRAL STATION that hasn't been lifted from better and worse movies; Salles just grabbed what he could, slapped it together, and let the joints show."
Michael Atkinson (MovieLink) (http://www.mrshowbiz.com/reviews/moviereviews/movies/66064.html)RATING: *** out of ****
"Walter Salles' CENTRAL STATION is a touching, well-made motion picture whose only real flaw lies in the overfamiliar storyline. This kind of film, which explores the bond between a motherless child and a lonely older woman, has been attempted so frequently that good acting and direction are no longer enough. The script must offer a new and compelling quality, something to draw us into the narrative and make us really care about what happens to the characters. As with recent films such as KOLYA and UNHOOK THE STARS, CENTRAL STATION has what is necessary - the ability to touch the heart.
Another interesting aspect of this picture is that it presents a rare look at non-tourist locales in Brazil. If one of the functions of a motion picture is to take us to new places, Central Station accomplishes that goal admirably. Salles (whose previous feature, the compelling-but-uneven noir thriller FOREIGN LAND, was a festival circuit success) grants us views of densely-populated cities where the houses are little more than shanties, where illiteracy is an epidemic, and where an obsession with religion dominates nearly every facet of life (people pay hard-earned money to have their picture taken with the statue of a saint). Nevertheless, as intriguing as the road trip element is, the characters (more than the setting) keep us involved.
The film opens inside a large train station in Rio de Janeiro, where Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) is going about her daily job. At a dollar's price, she will write a letter for one of the many illiterate passers-by in the station, then seal it in an addressed envelope. When it comes to mailing the letters, however, Dora is not trustworthy. Based on an arbitrary criteria, she posts some letters, tears up others, and stashes a few in a drawer. Dora doesn't care when she betrays a trust; she has made the determination of what's best, and decides whether or not to send a letter based on that judgment. She stands aloof and uninvolved, making her assessments dispassionately. Until she meets Josue (Vinicius de Oliveira), that is.
Josue is the 9 year-old son of a woman who dictates a letter to Dora. In it, she asks the boy's father if they can be reunited. When leaving the station afterwards, the woman is struck by a bus and killed. Josue, with nowhere to go, begins to loiter around the station, acting pugnacious and withdrawn. His plight stirs something in Dora (she has seen the fate of shoplifters, who are shot, and she reasons that, without her intervention, a similar fate awaits Josue), who brings him home, then sells him to an adoption agency. However, when her best friend notes that Josue is too old to be adopted and that the organization may be a front for organ thieves, Dora kidnaps the boy from the agency, then goes on a journey with him, searching for his father.
Regardless of the political issues the film touches upon (those oblivious to the current situation in South America may miss Salles' allusions entirely; they aren't subtle, but he keeps things from turning preachy) or its travelogue aspect, the real heart of CENTRAL STATION is the relationship between Dora and Josue. As in the best of this sub-genre of movies, the two change each other in profound ways. Dora fills the maternal role left vacant in the boy's life by the unexpected demise of his mother.
In turn, her cynicism melts away and she discovers that she still retains the capacity to love, and, in the service of love, to sacrifice. Salles develops the relationship perfectly. It is certainly a familiar story (I was especially reminded of a small 1992 Italian film, IL LADRO DI BAMBINI), but, in this context, it seems fresh.
The two leads both do superlative work. Fernanda Montenegro believably conveys the changes in Dora as her relationship with Josue transforms her inner self. It's a finely-tuned portrayal that doesn't ask the audience to accept any sudden or hard-to-swallow shifts in behavior. Dora's rebirth is gradual. Newcomer Vinicius de Oliveira doesn't have as complex as role to essay, but his performance as a young, lost boy touches the heart. Together, the two actors create a palpable, and very special, bond (not only with each other, but with the audience).
CENTRAL STATION placed third in the 1998 Toronto International Film Festival's popular balloting (behind LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL and WAKING NED DEVINE), which is a testament to its mass appeal. The reason is understandable. CENTRAL STATION is both literate and emotionally-powerful - an increasingly rare combination. It does not rely upon camera tricks or overwrought performances to touch the viewer. There's manipulation going on here, but it's subtle and skillful, and, as a result, we don't feel like our heartstrings are being twisted and pulled by an unseen puppeteer. For that reason, CENTRAL STATION is well worth seeing, especially if you're in the mood for an affecting drama.
James Berardinelli 1998 (http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/c/central.html)"Call me a curmudgeon, but I just can't warm up to Central Station, the new Brazilian film that's gotten audience awards at several festivals on the circuit this year since ist premiere last January at Sundance, and even won first prize at Berlin. To me, its blatantly manipulative pairing of an adorable young boy and a selfish, honesty-challenged older woman, who first battle and then learn to love one another amid the photogenic surroundings of Brazil, seemed so calculating that I could never get emotionally involved.
A better title might have been 'Kolya Flies to Rio,' though Central Station lacks the Czech film's bite. Speaking of bites, I am thankful that at least the kid did not also have an adorable dog.
After Josue (Vinicius de Oliveira) and his mother avail themselves of a professional letter writer named Dora (Fernanda Montenegro, one of Brazil's best-known actresses) in Rio's Central Station, the mother is hit by a bus and killed. With nowhere else to turn, Josue begins hanging around Dora, who at first sees him as little more than a chance to make some extra money by selling him to a clandestine adoption agency. Later, when they embark on a journey to find Josue's father in the interior -- a rich thematic vein that goes back at least to Telemachus's identical quest in 'The Odyssey,' circa 800 B.C. -- we follow their exploits, as each, initially afraid to become emotionally involved with the other, gradually (and unsurprisingly) gives in to love.
Walter Salles, CENTRAL STATION'S young director, who has made two previous well-received films, HIGH ART and FOREIGN LAND, obviously knows his cinema history, and perhaps the best thing about the movie is its use of non-professionals, in the best Italian neorealist way, for an authenticity among the anonymous supporting players that you just can't get from Central Casting. The film's occasional foray into expressive visuals and its more substantial investment in a haunting musical score are also in its favor.
And there are some tough moments in the story -- for example, when Dora, a lying, wine-guzzling failure of a woman, dumps the kid at the illegal adoption service and later, when she tries to abandon him on the road -- but unless you're more involved emotionally in the film than I was, they seem ultimately little more than plot points. And while the film's pretended no-nonsense strategy is to immediately negate conventionally 'sweet' moments that threaten to arise with a harsh exchange of dialogue, this technique itself ultimately becomes predictably cute since the inevitability of the two principal's bonding is obvious from almost the first moment they meet.
Our two characters travel through some gorgeous scenery, but Salles never manages to integrate it into his story and we mostly watch it, like them, through the window of a bus. Even worse, he does the same thing with religious rituals that he lovingly films but never bothers to weave convincingly into the fabric of Dora's and Josue's lives. Similarly, along the way they encounter a Christian fundamentalist truck driver but, again, this encounter seems to have no thematic purpose other than providing the film with yet one more 'colorful' character to stretch out the narrative. These moments feel enormously artificial to me, completely inorganic, and -- it must be said -- totally cynical to boot.
The tear-stained ending will come as a surprise to no one, nor the fact that many in the audience will be tear-stained as well."
Peter Brunette (http://www.film.com/reviews/index.jhtml?review_url=/film-review/1998/10361/100/default-review.html)"When this subtly magnificent new movie from Brazil won the coveted Golden Bear award for best film at the 1998 Berlin International Film Festival, many saw the unexpected yet welcomed honor as a continued validation of a more accessible and financially responsible cinema being pioneered for the global marketplace by filmmakers who understand the fundamentals of simple yet elegant dramatic structure and the universality of human emotion. Central Station is performed in the native Portuguese of director Walter Salles, yet its human feelings and command of filmmaking render it a work capable of speaking to audiences in all corners of the earth.
In the bustling train terminal of downtown Rio de Janeiro, 67-year-old desultory ex-teacher Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) works writing brief letters for those wishing to contact loved ones. In the evening she spreads them out on the table of her cramped apartment, deciding with single neighbor Irene (Marilia Pera) which will be thrown away and which will be stuffed into a drawer and eventually mailed -- maybe. Taking uncharacteristic pity on recently orphaned 10-year-old Josue (Vinicius de Oliveira) , Dora corrects an disasterous initial decision regarding the boy's welfare and accompanies him on an ardous journey to the remote Northeast section of Brazil in search of the father Josue's never met and perhaps an elusive peace of her own.
The same age as her character, Fernanda Montenegro (»our own Gena Rowlands or Giulietta Masina,« Salles told one interviewer) hasn't made a lot of films, preferring to work in theater pieces that inevitably become so successful -- her acclaimed performance in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 'The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant' lasted for three years -- that they prevent her from taking more movie roles. Nevertheless, she found time for Leon Hirszman's THEY DON'T WEAR BLACK TIE, which won the Golden Lion at the 1980 Venice Film Festival, and she's won the best actress award from festivals in Moscow (for Paulo Porto's EM FAMILIA in 1970), Taormina, Italy (for Arnaldo Jabor's TUDO BEM in 1977) and Berlin (for CENTRAL STATION). By turns tough and tender, she brings to Dora a world-weariness made fresh by the sheer tenaciousness of the character; in such scenes as her harrowing rescue of Josue from some unscrupulous types, she seems not at all in control of the valiant side of her nature, and this crusading impulsiveness is both enthralling and endearing.
As integral a part of Brazilian culture as Montenegro has become, the opposite is true of young Vinicius de Oliveira, whom Salles and Cohn discovered shining shoes in the Rio de Janeiro airport and chose over some 1500 hopefuls for the part of Josue. Nearly 10 at the time, he'd never been to the movies but, said Salles, »was a street kid that had the knowledge of what the street means and the difficulties of fighting for survival. But he had not lost his innocence in going through that phase« If this is starting to sound familiar, remember Hector Babenco's notorioius 1981 Brazilian film PIXOTE (whose young star was subsequently murdered), which told a much more violent and explicit story of survival on the tough streets -- and also starred Marilia Pera (Irene) as a troubled prostitute.
The film's award-winning script was developed at the Sundance Institute, after Salles turned over the basic idea to the two young screenwriters. A filmmaker possessed of an uncommonly clear-eyed passion for urgent social issues and seductive production values, he first came to international attention when he segued from documentaries to the provocative FOREIGN LAND (it, too, was photographed by Walter Carvalho, who, in the kinetic, widescreen images of CENTRAL STATION somehow manages to make Rio and the desolate Northeast section of Brazil simultaneously gritty and slick). The 1995 film sets its story of international intrigue against the ripple effect caused by the disasterous policies of since-impeached president Fernando Collor at the turn of the decade. Since completing CENTRAL STATION, Salles has partnered again with Daniela Thomas (co-director of FOREIGN LAND) on MIDNIGHT (MIA NOCHE), a 75-minute French co-production developed as part of the '2000 Seen By…' series for the French TV station Arte.
In Swiss-born producer Arthur Cohn, Salles seems to have found a soulmate with a superlative international reputation. No less than five of his productions have earned Oscars (a record), including THE SKY ABOVE, THE MUD BELOW (Best Documentary Feature, 1963), THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS (Best Foreign Language Film, 1963), BLACK AND WHITE IN COLOR (Best Foreign Language Film, 1978), DANGEROUS MOVES (Best Foreign Language Film, 1985) and AMERICAN DREAM (Best Documentary Feature, 1991). If these and the other films he's produced have anything in common, it is a vigourous but often melancholy concern for dignity in the face of social injustice as well as the quest for freedom from helplessness and the redemption that can come from making and executing hard choices.
As Oscar time approaches, CENTRAL STATION looms as a film with the power to join that short list of movies nominated in the general categories (IL POSTINO is the most obvious recent example). Industry reports link Cohn and Salles to a new project to be filmed in Santa Fe, New Mexico; no matter how their new partnership plays out, it has already produced one great movie that will be embraced by audiences all over the world."
Eddie Cockrell (Nitrate Online) (http://www.nitrateonline.com/rcentral.html)"With a face like a pug and a disposition like a pit bull, bitter, middle-aged Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) would seem to not have a maternal bone in her body. The surly former school teacher, her lined face betraying a lifetime of disappointments, sits in the main train station in Rio and pens letters (usually of the lovelorn variety) for illiterate Brazilian passersby for a price. She then proceeds to go home with her pocket money and throw away most of the missives and laugh at the hopes and dreams of the senders.
One day a woman with her son in tow stops at Dora's table and dictates a letter to her estranged husband, hoping to reunite her family. Though the letter is like scores of others Dora's penned, the aftermath of the transaction is hardly standard. After leaving the bustling Central Station, the boy Josue (Vincinius De Oliveira) is practically orphaned when his mother is struck by a bus and the nine-year-old is left without a guardian. When Dora happens upon the boy later in the day, she suddenly has an opportunity to pad her wallet substantially. A man who works in the station strikes a deal with her to sell the boy to a shady adoption agency that purports to place Brazilian children in European and American homes. After spending the night with Dora, Josue is dropped off at the agency and the spinster suddenly has plenty of money to spend on a brand new color television set. When her concerned sister suggests that such agencies sell the children's organs, Dora, overwhelmed by her conscience, visits the agency and impulsively steals back Josue. Without much thought, Dora boards a bus with the boy and sets out to find his father in Northeastern Brazil. Their often wayward journey together and the bond that forms between this pair of travelers makes up the balance of this uncharacteristic road film.
The CENTRAL STATION script builds slowly and never quite reaches the transcendental strength of its primary performances. But director Walter Salles' film is a powerful paean to emotional awakening, mostly because of the superb Fernanda Montenegro, who, as the dour Dora, makes the scribe's transformation seem more than plausible. That the needy pair gradually grows closer should be staid and predictable but Montenegro and the equally fine child actor De Oliveira manage to surprise as a couple of travelers looking for hope amid the squalor and displacement of contemporary Brazil."
Darren D'Addario(newyork.citysearch.com) (http://newyork.citysearch.com/E/M/NYCNY/0010/15/54)"CENTRAL STATION is the reward that puts a smile on the face of movielovers who search diligently, and so often in vain, for small jewels.
CENTRAL STATION is the story of two people who don't want to love each other. Dora, a 67-year-old cynic, and Josue, a 9-year-old dynamo, meet when Josue's mother brings him to Rio de Janeiro's Central Station, where she approaches a professional letter writer. Helping illiterate people write letters with words they cannot find in themselves is Dora's specialty. But she is a sham. She later mocks and then tosses away the letters of her grateful customers. Important words, finally expressed, lie in the trash along with the trust she has been given.
In a terrible moment, Josue's mother is killed in the street, and the boy, in an instant, is homeless in the impersonal chaos that surrounds the station. Wearing a thin layer of bravado, the scared little fellow returns to Dora's station desk and asks her to help him find the father he has never met. Dora, sunk in the daily routine of a woman who has given up on life, at first refuses. After circumstance reunites the unlikely pair, we are told the story of their journey together, the boy searching for his father, the woman taking one last shot at finding something within herself.
Traveling by train, ever deeper into a nearly uninhabited countryside, the two have only each other as they ride to a place that is merely an address on a piece of paper. They are penniless and hungry in an unfamiliar land. Because Josue and Dora share a lot of silence, Fernanda Montenegro, an esteemed Brazilian actress, brings Dora's evolution to us primarily through facial expression. When she delivers Dora's moment of transcendence, Montenegro is triumphant. The evaporation of cynicism is a beautiful thing. You will remember them: Josue, drunk on the bus, proudly proclaiming his name-the only thing he has; and Dora, smiling at last, basking in the warmth of a stranger who gives them a lift. You might never forget their final sublime collusion, born as it is of street-smart inspiration. Sentimentality does not mar the telling of this prickly friendship.
A director emboldened by inspiration and wise in his restraint found two people to carry a small story all the way to major success at the Sundance, Toronto, Telluride, and Berlin film festivals. CENTRAL STATION is the reward that puts a smile on the face of movielovers who search diligently, and so often in vain, for small jewels."
Joan Ellis (Nebbadoon Syndicate) (http://movie.mike.com/docs/joined_reviewfiles/CENTRAL_STATION.html)"When Dan Quayle was campaigning for the presidency, he was advised to make a good-will trip to Latin America, presumbly to capture the votes of people from those lands now living in the U.S. He reportedly demurred: »How can I give speeches there? I don't even speak Latin!« Too bad. When the former vice president does learn enough of the language, perhaps there's a place for him as mayor of Rio de Janeiro. Family values are sorely needed there, even more than they are in his home country. If a kid has no parents or relatives willing to take him in, he's not likely to be picked up by a welfare organization. It's life on the streets with a career as a petty thief. Things could be worse, though. Given the lack of respect accorded to young street people, he could be shot by police for no particular reason or beaten up just for the heck of it. CENTRAL STATION, a Brazilian film which has made the rounds of the festivals including Sundance and Berlin, is a remarkable study of an unfortunate kid and how he is saved by a most unlikely benefactor. Directed by Walter Salles, heretofore known more as a documentary film maker than a story teller, CENTRAL STATION is a poignant road movie about the unlikely friendship between a cynical sixty-seven year old woman and a nine year old boy she meets outside Rio's principal train station.
The two leads are as implausible a combination as the people they play. The part of the aging woman, Dora, is performed by Brazil's most celebrated actress, Fernanda Montenegro, while her counterpart, the 10-year-old Josue, is rendered by a Vinicius de Oliveira who not only had no acting experience but had not even been inside a movie theater. (Oliveria won the part against a field of 1500 lads and what's more he prevailed by accident: the director ran into him, a shoe shine boy at a small airport in the center of Rio, and was asked to help him to buy a sandwich, promising to return the money when Salles came back from Sao Paolo.)
The story opens on Dora, a retired elementary school teacher, who works as a scribe outside Rio's Central Station. Catering to a largely poor and illiterate clientele, she writes letters which they dictate to her, charging one dollar each for her services, but she has such contempt for her customers that she later trashes ninety percent of the mail. When a woman, accompanied by her son Josue, is hit by a bus and killed, Dora takes the boy temporarily to her home, then sells him unwittingly for one thousand dollars to a man who intends to have the kid killed, his organs sold to rich clients in the west. When Dora hears of the scheme from her neighbor Irene (Marilia Pera) , she abducts Josue from the criminal's home and takes him by bus on a long journey to locate his father, a drunk who had run away from the family some time earlier.
Manipulating the trenchant screenplay by Joao Emanuel Carneiro and Marcos Bernstein and jogging the emotions with a robust piano sound track, Salles takes us from Rio to a poor, dusty, but developing town located in one of the countless rural backwater areas of the huge country. On the way she and the boy develop a profound affection for each other, with Dora regaining the human feelings she had lost years back after retiring from her profession. Virtually all the people we meet on the road are dirt poor, many deeply religious. In one scene designed to demonstrate Dora's renewed feeling of romance, she and Josue meet a deeply religious truck driver who gives them a lift and feeds the penniless pair until he is scared off by Dora's affectionate overtures. Cameraman Walter Carvalho is particularly adept at capturing a variety of sharply etched faces among Brazil's poor: a truckload of Evangelical women who gather and sing to a patron saint; and a succession of illiterates who compose letters for Dora. While the story is not likely to be acclaimed for broad humor, Dora keeps her neighbor engrossed in tales of her customers. One of them writes that he had been following the personals columns and that the recipient is the only woman he is interested in. (He wrote the same letter to ten women.) One woman wants to return to her abusive husband, but Dora refuses to send the letter because she does not wish to have a part in the beating this customer was in for.
Fernanda Montenegro is a seasoned actress who turns in an expected ardent performance. But Vinicius de Oliveira is a true find, an unpretentious, wholly natural young man who does his part like a child star nurtured on years of training. The film does shows Brazilians as both good and bad people, in one case portraying the senseless shooting of a youthful thief by adults who'd as soon kill these young toughs as look at them. The movie does best in exploring the growing friendship between its two disparate principals but is not as successful in expanding the theme to demonstrate that Brazil is a country in transition. It is a personal story, albeit often airless, and one likely to be seen as Brazil's entry to the 1998 Academy Awards competition."
Harvey S. Karten(film_critic@compuserve.com)(http://reviews.imdb.com/Reviews/137/13766)"To help make ends meet, retired schoolteacher Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) works as a letter-writer in Rio de Janeiro's Central Station. Illiterate working people approach her table and dictate letters to lovers and family members, which she transcribes. The irony is that Dora's life is empty of such human relationships.
Each night she returns to her apartment and receives visits from her next door neighbor Irene (Marilia Pêra) , who is also alone in the world. Dora spills out her bitterness at humanity, including the clients who have put their trust in her. She goes through their letters with Irene and makes fun of the human feelings contained in them. Half go directly into the garbage can, because she thinks they are not worth posting. The other half end up in a desk drawer, to be posted when she gets around to it. While she picks apart the poor folks whom she writes for, Irene, a few years younger and less bitter, pleads for clemency while usually being overridden.One day she is approached by Ana (Sôia Lira) and her nine-year old son Josué (Vincius De Oliveira) . She wants to send the boy up to the remote northeast area of Brazil to meet his father for the first time. She dictates the letter to Dora and gives her a photo of the boy to send to the father along with the letter, so he will be able to recognize him when he arrives. Dora takes the letter back to her apartment and sticks it in her desk drawer.
The next day Ana is run down by a bus in front of the train station. The homeless Josué has no place to go and begins spending his days and nights in Central Station. Every so often, Dora--despite herself--offers him a kind word or a sandwich. There is a nationwide epidemic of homeless children in Brazil, a problem that was treated cinematically in PIXOTE. Many of these children turn to crime in order to survive and their prospects for survival are bleak. CENTRAL STATION shows a teenager being gunned down on the railroad tracks by a cop for the crime of stealing a walkman.
In a mixture of opportunism and pity, Dora takes Josué to an adoption broker. She receives a thousand dollars and is assured that he will be sent to a 'good family' in the United States. She buys a new Sony TV with her commission and shows it off to Irene. When she explains how she got the money, Irene screams at her. Nobody will adopt a nine-year-old. They will kill him and sell the organs on the open market. Dora, who still has a tinge of affection for the boy, decides to rescue him from the broker and personally take him to his father.
Thus begins a remarkable journey that is unlike any I have ever seen in a film. It is a 'road movie' that simultaneously takes the bitter old woman and the child deep into Brazil's countryside, and into the recesses of their own hearts. Through a series of mishaps, the two find the journey much more daunting than they first expected. They learn to rely on each other's emotional support and street smarts. In the process, he forgives her for selling him to the broker, while she begins to experience love for another human being for the first time in her adult life.
What gives their odyssey additional power from a cinematic standpoint is the on-location filming in the roadside cafes, bodegas and small towns in Brazil's dry and mountainous northeast. The characters whom we meet in these scenes appear to be ordinary Brazilians from the area, whose faces are much more beautiful and appropriate to the action than any professional actors' could be.
The casting of Dora is critical to the success of the film. In the production notes, Director Walter Salles describes 67 year old Fernanda Montenegro as Brazil's Gena Rowlands or Giulietta Masina. She is an enormously intelligent actress who has starred in the leftist film THEY DON'T WEAR BLACK TIE. The choice of Marilia Pêra is also interesting since she played the prostitute who ran with the gang of child outlaws in PIXOTE. Vincius De Oliveira was a shoeshine boy whom Walter Salles discovered outside a small airport in downtown Rio de Janeiro. He says, »Because it was raining and he didn't have any clients at the moment, he asked me to help him buy a sandwich. He told me that once I returned from the city of Sao Paulo that afternoon, he would pay me back.« In other words, the shoeshine boy who is cast as Josué really is a Josué.
CENTRAL STATION hearkens back to some of the greatest films of Italian neo-realism like THE BICYCLE THIEF. It will also remind you of the films of Satyajit Ray, whose affection for common folk did not preclude a critical view of their foibles. The difference between CENTRAL STATION and the garbage coming out of Hollywood each week lies in the social and economic differences between Brazil and the United States. Countries that are living on the edge, like Ray's India, De Sica's postwar Italy or Brazil today can foster art that gets closer to the human condition. The desperation borne out of economic and social dislocation can work on the sensitivity of the sympathetic novelist or film-maker and great art often emerges.
While CENTRAL STATION does not offer any pat answers to Brazil's problems, there is no doubt that the obstacles that economic hardship puts before the disadvantaged appall Walter Salles. Dora is not some kind of political activist. Indeed, her cynicism would make her an unlikely candidate. Instead she articulates the hopes of ordinary Brazilians for a society in which love and happiness is the rule. We are reminded of the title of Ken Silverstein's study of the Workers Party: 'Without Fear of Being Happy.'
Yesterday, somebody sent me some email trying to figure out where I was going with my articles on Marxism and indigenism. I tried to explain that it was part of a life-long struggle to redefine a socialism on the basis of freedom from want, in an environment of human solidarity. Like the characters in CENTRAL STATION, the great majority of the human race is looking for love and companionship on a personal and communal basis, while not having to worry about where the next meal is coming from. Nearly everything else is extraneous.
The director Walter Salles understands this completely. In explaining the critical acclaim the film has received, he says: »...I think the question of the search is very important in the film. We're talking about the woman who searches for her lost feelings and a boy who searches for his father. Since the Greeks, I think we've always been concerned with the idea of getting back to the place where we come from--to try to understand who we are. This is the boy's plight, but what the two of them discover is not only the family at the end of the film, but the importance of companionship, friendship and understanding.«»In a way, these values are not really appreciated in today's very competitive society, where efficiency is everything. These questions of solidarity or friendship or everything that's important in the film are not rated in the Stock Exchange. This might also be one of the clues to why people respond to the film in such an emotional way. It talks about things that are not perceived as important but are extremely important for our survival.«
Louis Proyect(lnp3@columbia.edu) (http://reviews.imdb.com/Reviews/150/15097)"In short: Nicely tempered Brazilian chick flick.
Central Station is the Brazilian entry for the Academy Awards so Cranky took a look. As always, the difficulty with foreign films is that you spend most of your time reading the screen instead of watching the production. Sometimes there are cultural or religious elements that are important, and considered a 'given' by the film makers. It's harder to get swept away, which is where Cranky found his problems with this flick
In the city of Rio de Janeiro lives a shriveled up, retired school teacher named Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) . She makes ends meet by writing letters for the illiterate at the Central Station train depot. Dora takes the cash, and cackles over the letters in the evening with her friend Irene (Marilia Pêra). Needless to say this hag never mails the letters, and leaves hundreds of people hanging with their miserable lives up in the air.
One of these folks is Ana (Sôia Lira) , mother of 9-year old Josué (Vinicius De Oliveira) . Josué's father lives somewhere in the northern hinterlands of Brazil and the boy wants to see Daddy. The lady keeps coming back to send letters and one day is killed by a bus, leaving Josué all alone in the heartless and cruel city. Something about Josué stirs up Dora, who takeshim off the street and feeds him. This isn't going where you think, folks, because she sells to boy to a murdering flesh peddler named Pedrão (Otávio Augusto) . Word is he kills the kidlets and sells the organs for cash. Must be a good business, 'cuz her payment gets Dora a new television.
The play between the two old ladies is an interesting one. Although Dora lies to Irene about where the money for the teevee came from, Irene pulls out the true story and totally freaks. Dora is swayed enough to rescue the boy and the pair flee to the north, a price on Dora's head.
It may not be a happy pairing, but it is an interesting adventure as the mother instincts Dora never exercised begin to surface. Josué is just distrustful enough to appear more than the cute, moptop kid you'd see in American movies. A bond is formed by the circumstances they travel through on the way to find the mysterious daddy, including a potential love interest for Dora and some kind of Christian pilgrimage (which is that religious stuff I mentioned up top. Cranky gets the feeling that there's a lot more significance to the events of the pilgrimage, which was totally lost on this Member of the Tribe).
Director Walter Salles has put together a very interesting flick. Both characters search for something they don't have. For Josué, it is a father. For Dora, it is an emotional center. Cranky's ex would have been a waterworks by the time the end titles rolled. Film students can debate the logical, if unsatisfying, ending all they'd like. Cranky could have waited for a pay per view showing.
Chuck Schwartz(The Cranky Critic) (http://www.crankycritic.com/archive98/centralstation.html)"In Walter Salles' CENTRAL STATION, a film that is as beautiful as it is wrenching, the camera picks out a worn, unhappy-looking older woman who sets up a table and chair every day in Rio's vast railroad terminus. She earns a pittance writing letters for the illiterate, whom she regards with a cold matter-of-fact disdain. She is a retired schoolteacher who must augment her minuscule pension in this manner and takes scant pains to disguise her bitterness. Indeed, if she regards what is being dictated to her as rubbish she refuses to mail the completed letter entrusted to her by the customer. A drawer stuffed with such letters in a bureau in her tiny apartment attests to the magnitude of her disdain for her fellow human beings.
In short, Fernanda Montenegro's Dora is a mean-spirited, dishonest, highly judgmental individual--the very last person with whom you would trust a child. Yet when a woman, one of Dora's customers, is struck fatally by a car, Dora is the only person in all of Rio with whom the woman's 10-year-old son Josue (Vinicius de Oliveira) has had any contact, even though fleeting. You may want to resist this movie as much as Dora resists Josue. You may say to yourself, »Not yet another movie about an aging curmudgeon melted by an irresistible kid.«" But that is to discount the profound scope and vision that Salles brings to his story. CENTRAL STATION belongs to the grand humanist tradition of Italian neo-realism and has been made with the care and concern for values and emotions that have always characterized the films of its producer, five-time Oscar-winner Arthur Cohn. It is also to underestimate the power of Montenegro, widely regarded as Brazil's greatest actress, and the remarkable natural acting ability of De Oliveira, who in fact was spotted by Salles at Rio's airport, where he had been spending several hours a day shining shoes to help out his poor family.
The world of CENTRAL STATION is all too universal--a place where older people, even those who've led responsible, respectable lives, are in effect discarded, left to fend for themselves, and a place where children are even more vulnerable at a time when families seem increasingly far-flung and fragmented. Indeed, a few deft plot developments propel Dora and Josue on a long railroad journey in search of the father he doesn't even know. (It has been suggested that their journey represents on another level a kind of quest for a sense of Brazilian identity.)
Dora is actually capable of an evil and indifference that won't be revealed here except to observe that the woman's hatefulness gives Montenegro all the greater a range in which to depict with the utmost understatement her ever-so-gradual regeneration--not so much an awakening of maternal instincts but a warming to the simple contact with another human being. In her relationship with the resilient yet inescapably vulnerable Josue, Dora is moved to confront the painful losses that have left her so emotionally calcified.
(The only other role of substance goes to none other than Mariela Pera, unforgettable as the prostitute in PIXOTE. She plays Dora's good-humored neighbor, whose sense of decency proves to be pivotal.)
CENTRAL STATION becomes transcendent in ist stunning, unexpected climactic sequence that attests to the formidability of Montenegro's gifts as an actress. Her portrayal of Dora, one of the year's finest performances, attests to a career spent bringing to life a large portion of the stage's most challenging heroines. It also attests to Montenegro's unfailing grasp of the fact that acting for the cinema--in which she has appeared only a handful of times--requires no less than revealing your soul. For Fernanda Montenegro, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Italy's late Giulietta Masina (Federico Fellini's wife and frequent star) in appearance and talent, CENTRAL STATION is a personal triumph and a rich cinematic experience."
Kevin Thomas(Los Angeles Times) (http://www.calendarlive.com/HOME/CALENDARLIVE/MOVIES/SNEAK/t000107686.html)Almut Naß: "Herr Salles, Ihr Film wurde mit einer Telenovela, einer Fernsehseifenoper, verglichen. Was halten Sie davon?"
Walter Salles: "Das würde ich bestimmt nicht sagen. Die Novela ist die Banalisierung des Alltags, eine Möglichkeit, das Land auf persönliche Probleme und die Mittelschicht zu reduzieren. CENTRAL DO BRASIL soll den Leuten Stimme geben, die normalerweise im Fernsehen keine Stimme haben. CENTRAL DO BRASIL ist das genaue Gegenteil einer Telenovela."
Almut Naß: "Einer der grundlegenden Aspekte von CENTRAL DO BRASIL ist neben ökonomischem Mangel eine emotionale Leere, die Unfähigkeit, Respekt und Zärtlichkeit zu geben. Glauben Sie, daß Brasilien so charakterisiert werden kann?"
Walter Salles: "In der Tat ist das zentrale Thema des Films die Entdeckung der Gefühle, der Mitmenschlichkeit und Zärtlichkeit. Seit den siebziger und achtziger Jahren hat sich in Brasilien ein Zynismus breitgemacht, der daraus entstanden ist, daß von den Regierungen propagiert wurde, Brasilien müsse ein Land der 'ersten Welt' werden. Für diesen Zweck waren alle Mittel heilig. Diese Situation hat Brasilien auf allen Ebenen durchdrungen. Die Menschen haben jedes Gefühl dafür verloren, was ethisch ist und was nicht. Die andere Seite ist das Gefühl einer permanenten Leere. Genau darüber spricht der Film. Brasilien ist auf der Suche nach einer neuen Identität, und die Suche des Jungen nach seinem Vater spricht uns alle an."
Almut Naß: "Existiert heute so etwas wie der 'brasilianische Film'?
Walter Salles: "Anders als zu Zeiten des 'Cinema Novo', wo eine kleine Gruppe zusammengearbeitet hat, sind die derzeitigen Filme äußerst unterschiedlich. Es gibt aber einen gemeinsamen Nenner: die Lust, Filme zu machen. Das kommt vielleicht daher, daß wir so lange keine Filme machen konnten. Das gegenwärtige brasilianische Kino wird mit Genuß gemacht, und ich glaube, das merkt man."
Almut Naß: "Wie steht es gegenwärtig um das brasilianische Kino?"
Walter Salles: "Nachdem von 1990 bis 1994 unter der Regierung Collor das Filmemachen unmöglich wurde, wird seit Ende 1994 wieder produziert. Derzeit boomt der brasilianische Film, letztes Jahr wurden 30 Filme gedreht, dieses Jahr werden es vielleicht 40 sein. Das ist im Vergleich zu Ländern wie Frankreich mit etwa 120 Filmen pro Jahr noch sehr wenig. Aber es ist ein Anfang."
Almut Naß: Gespräch mit Regisseur Walter Salles. In: Die Tageszeitung (Berlin) 23.2.1998
last update 19.1.2016
Graphik: Uwe Krupka