Mark Reviews Movies: BACURAU

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 26, 2020

The village at the heart of Bacurau has been there for some time. The people who live there know it, obviously, because it's right there. They're living in it. There's even an old, hand-drawn map in the classroom at the local school, showing the layout of the town—its main road, side roads, houses, school, and museum. Bacurau exists, if only within the context of this film, and it doesn't matter what anyone may say to the contrary.

Unofficially, though, the village of Bacurau, located in a semi-arid region of northeastern Brazil, and, by extension, its people might as well not exist. The main source of water, a river flowing from the north, has been dammed upstream—well past the point where the old dam, now abandoned and so forgotten that it's the perfect hiding place for wanted criminals, used to hold back the water. The locals essentially have to steal water. A man with a tanker truck fills it with water, although not at the dam. Armed guards are protecting that new abomination, and as for those aforementioned wanted criminals, they're on the run because they tried to destroy it.

All of this information is introduced early in writers/directors Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles' film, which is as explicit in its political outrage as it is in its embrace of genre conventions. Ultimately, all of this is leading to a showdown—a violent skirmish between the locals and the people who are actively trying to destroy them. The screenplay's escalation of that conflict, though, is precisely incremental.

The central premise is that a gang of foreigners have come to the region with the goal of killing off villagers one by one, before they enact some kind of final spree of murder. This is the genre-focused part of the film—a high-concept setup that results in some broad satire and plenty of violence. The real point, though, is that these killers, playing some kind of twisted game for points and at the behest of an unseen party speaking to them through earpieces, are just the most obvious form of destruction and death. The town has been doomed to annihilation well before they arrive.

There's the water, of course, about which Teresa (Bárbara Colen) learns from the guy with the tanker as he drives her to her hometown. She has come for the funeral of her grandmother, an important matriarchal figure in the village whose powers—at least according to some locals—included a kind of witchcraft. The funeral proceeds, with only a short interruption by Domingas (Sonia Braga), the town's alcoholic doctor.

Teresa is re-united with her father Plinio (Wilon Rabelo), a teacher, and Pacote (Thomás Aquino), a former member of the local gang whose killings are highlighted in an online video. One day, while teaching his students, Plinio discovers that Bacurau has disappeared on GPS maps and satellite images.

The story, by the way, is set "a few years in the future," and "a few" seems like the operative phrase. It's clear that Mendonça and Dornelles have the current state of Brazil, with its recently-elected authoritarian leader, in mind, and certainly, the details in the backdrop of this near-futuristic world have the stain of government overreach on them. There are the armed guards at the dam, and there's a moment in which one of the foreign hunters stands in front of a television, broadcasting a news report about public executions resuming (in a place, on a side note, where a massive protest took place in the 1980s).

Even without this context, though, the filmmakers have made a pretty accessible indictment of how the poor, disenfranchised, and isolated can be trampled by the politics of power. It's not just the bigwigs, either. Shortly after Teresa's arrival, a local politician named Tony Jr. (Thardelly Lima), whose nominal suffix suggests his career is riding on nepotism, comes looking for support in an upcoming mayoral election, trying to buy off votes with a dump truck filled with books and boxes full of food—some of it past the expiration date. The villagers shout insults at him while hiding.

The bulk of the plot, though, has the villagers discovering that something nefarious is occurring. Strangers from a big city, supposedly on a motorbike tour of the country, arrive, asking a lot of questions. A massacre at a local farm is discovered.

We learn about the murderous "game," featuring seemingly normal people from the United States who have sociopathic tendencies and led by Michael (Udo Kier). The scenes in which these homicidal players discuss their plans in enigmatic tones and overt language are occasionally clunky, in terms of the dialogue and how they overshadow the goings-on at the village. While the hunters plot their next kills and bicker about which of them gets to murder whom, the villagers decide that it's time to bring in Lunga (Silvero Pereira), the leader of the gang on the lam.

It's all building to that final showdown, an ultimately grisly and bloody affair that, like the whole of the story, takes its time to build tension, information, and some substantial irony (When we finally get a chance to look inside the much-talked-about museum, it pays off with two gags: the first showing how ill-prepared the hunters are and the second involving an empty wall). Like the eponymous town's motto ("If you come, come in peace"), Bacurau at first seems as if it's a plea. In reality, the film is more of a friendly warning for any system that would underestimate the perceived "lowest" of its population.

Note: Following a limited theatrical release, Bacurau is available on distributor Kino Lorber's virtual theatrical program Kino Marquee. You can rent the film for home viewing, with part of the cost going to your local independent theaters (e.g., the Music Box Theatre in Chicago). For more information and to purchase access to the film, click here. Participating theaters are listed on the page.

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