CENTRAL STATION (director: Walter Salles; cast: Fernanda Montenegro (Dora), Marilia Pera (Irene), Vinicius de Oliveira (Josue), Soia Lira (Ana) and Othon Bastos (Cesar), 1998-Brazil)
How receptive you are to this well-told but unoriginal and very sentimental Brazilian film about a miscreant old woman named Dora (Fernanda), a former teacher and now a letter writer in the Central Station of Rio; and, a 10-year-old orphaned boy, Josue (Vinicius), whose mother has just been run over by a bus as she leaves the letter writer after writing a letter asking her drunken husband who abandoned her and the kid years ago to get back with them again, depends on how much you mind being jerked around, as if you were on a chain and could be pulled on it at any time.
Though, I gladly admit, I enjoyed viewing the unusual road scenes in the desolate Brazilian countryside, where the people are poor, ignorant, superstitious, and craving for a religion that gives them some form of hope for their dismal lives.This former documentary film director, ably showed how religion can be as phony as the government that keeps most of the people impoverished. In any case, this was a place where tourists don't visit and films about this kind of Brazil are rarely seen by a foreign audience.
Therefore, for me, the strongest point of the film is the documentary type of cinematography that went into the parched Brazilian countryside, making the barren land throb with life. The most exciting shots were reserved for the religious pilgrimage the two weary travelers stumbled into, as they were caught in the light coming from the bright torches of the believers, as the two wanderers search for themselves in the darkness of the night. That was pure cinematic magic.
Ultimately, this is a road film, as Dora relents from her hatred of the kid, as she changes her mind after selling the kid to some unscrupulous people who will sell him for adoption. An adoption that could lead to unimaginable medical experiments done on the child. She decides to risk her life to get him out of those unscrupulous hands, and take him to the father who may not even be where the kid thinks he lives. A theme that has been done before, sometimes much better, as in LANDSCAPE IN THE MIST.
The film emphasized the built-in misery the heroine has that made life for her to be a grind, but there seemed to be something special about her that the actress was able to bring out from her characterization that made her seem better than what she appeared to be. The only friend she had for company, was her unmarried friend Irene (Pera), a much kinder and happier person than she, who could have been a prostitute, the film did not make that clear, it only hinted at that.
The beauty of this tale is not in the story itself, if there is a beauty in the tale, but in the way it affected the two main characters, Dora and Josue, as they eventually find something in themselves that they didn't know they had, and they learn how to deal with the bitternesss in their life. Their experience was comparable to a religious awakening. These two rotten apples turn out to be not so bad, after all. How much you like the film, depends on how believable you find the transformation that is about to take place for these characters.
For me, it was too much sentimentality and an uninspiring and contrived plot that kept me from warming up to the story. That the woman being transformed from a spiteful person, who made fun of the letter writers and despised children, will become transfixed from an ugly duckling, mad at the world, to an almost angelic figure, someone capable of bringing great joy to the world, was too much for me to accept, all at once. The story turned out just too goody-goody for my taste. I do not trust films that are so contrived, there is something about them that remains phony, that good acting can only mask just so much of that phoniness. And the acting by Montenegro was grand, she is the film, along with the fine cinematography, but even that, is not enough to completely overcome such a stale story.
REVIEWED ON 2/27/99 GRADE: C
Dennis Schwartz: "Movie Reviews"
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