A miserable film, and a miserable 3 hour film at that. I would have loved to have known more about the people in this Lisbon slum, aside from the obvious squalor of their condition and frequent drug use. We get aimless conversations, a lot of coughing, and people literally living in shadows, with their faces rarely shown. There's probably a point to that along the lines of these little lives being so invisible to the rest of the world, but I think the film would have far more effective (and watchable!) had there been at least a semblance of structure, vs. Complete immersion into their impoverished world.
How did they come to be in this slum? If any are immigrants, where did they come from, and what was that journey like? When did they first start using drugs, and where do they get the money to buy them? What are their experiences with the outside world? Have they ever been in love, and when was the last time they smiled? Do they go to school, do they work, do they have any dreams of a better life? And while the city is demolishing a lot of the buildings in the neighborhood, what is its position on the people living there?
Instead of answering these kinds of questions, we get tediously long scenes of mundane behavior and banal conversation in dingy, poorly lit rooms. There is certainly a sense of reality here, of showing people at the bottom of the socioeconomic spectrum living their humble lives day after day, and maybe there is great humanism in that. Life is a struggle. Despite that, people continue on. I think the film may remind us that people in slums are human beings since they're so easily generalized in negative ways, but on the other hand, it could have done better in this regard had it fleshed them out as much as it had shown them taking drugs. Perhaps implicitly the film may also be saying, you who are watching this arthouse film, be thankful for what you have in life, that you hadn't been born into an existence like this. If I'm anywhere close to Pedro Costa's intentions behind his unrelenting realism hallelujah, but it's a miss in terms of how he executed, and regardless, I'd definitely never want to watch any part of this again.
How did they come to be in this slum? If any are immigrants, where did they come from, and what was that journey like? When did they first start using drugs, and where do they get the money to buy them? What are their experiences with the outside world? Have they ever been in love, and when was the last time they smiled? Do they go to school, do they work, do they have any dreams of a better life? And while the city is demolishing a lot of the buildings in the neighborhood, what is its position on the people living there?
Instead of answering these kinds of questions, we get tediously long scenes of mundane behavior and banal conversation in dingy, poorly lit rooms. There is certainly a sense of reality here, of showing people at the bottom of the socioeconomic spectrum living their humble lives day after day, and maybe there is great humanism in that. Life is a struggle. Despite that, people continue on. I think the film may remind us that people in slums are human beings since they're so easily generalized in negative ways, but on the other hand, it could have done better in this regard had it fleshed them out as much as it had shown them taking drugs. Perhaps implicitly the film may also be saying, you who are watching this arthouse film, be thankful for what you have in life, that you hadn't been born into an existence like this. If I'm anywhere close to Pedro Costa's intentions behind his unrelenting realism hallelujah, but it's a miss in terms of how he executed, and regardless, I'd definitely never want to watch any part of this again.