Brazilian cinema is having its moment just as Iranian, Taiwanese and Korean cinemas did at some point. But what happens after the flavor-of-the-month stops being the flavor-of-the-month? Answer: a select group of filmmakers are forever treated by mostly Western critics as the standard bearers of their national cinemas at the expense of younger, equally daring filmmakers. Critics justifiably look forward to the latest work by Farhadi, Panahi, Bong Joon-Ho and Hong Sang-Soo whenever they make the festival circuit. But what about the rest of their countrymen and women? In the case of Latin American cinema, the likes of the Iñárritu-Del Toro-Cuarón triumvirate, Lucrecia Martel and Pablo Larraín get the auteurist stamp of approval even though, in some cases, most of their filmography has been produced and is still being produced outside their home countries.
The global success of I’m Still Here and The Secret Agent has certainly opened the door to more Brazilian films in this country. But the fact is that Brazilian filmmakers were delivering remarkably daring and innovative films long before those two saw the light of day, some even made by the same filmmaker in the case of The Secret Agent’s Kleber Mendonça Filho (Neighboring Sounds and Aquarius). Brazilian filmmakers even responded to Jair Bolsonaro’s right wing government (2019-2023) by releasing and producing films that presented a dystopic Brazil that asked what if his policies became carved in stone: Mendonça Filho’s and Juliano Dornelles’ Bacurau (2019, shot before Bolsonaro took power); Gustavo Mascaro’s Divine Love (2019); Lázaro Ramos’ Executive Order (2020); Iuli Gerbase’s The Pink Cloud (2021), and Anita Rocha da Silveira’s Medusa (2021).
Even though things have been looking up for the arts under current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, here comes Mascaro to remind Brazilians, and us, that we shouldn’t get too comfy with his new dystopic film The Blue Trail, playing exclusively at the Siskel Film Center until Thursday, April 30. Although not as bleak as his previous dystopic parable, Mascaro firmly roots in the present a future that is a stone's throw away from taking place.
Set in a small Amazonian town where a biplane towing a billboard that reads “The future is for everyone” while a voice falsely proclaims that to take care of the elderly is “a patriotic duty,” Mascaro and co-writer Tibério Azul presents us with a Brazil where the elderly are discarded to a so-called, and unseen, Colony to free younger generations from the burden of taking care of their relatives and become more productive.
Seventy-seven year-old Tereza (Denise Weinberg) works at an alligator slaughterhouse alongside Esmeraldina (Rosa Malagueta) who is actually looking forward to spending life in that so-called Colony. One afternoon, returning home from work, Tereza finds a young couple installing a gigantic laurel above her doorframe and proclaiming her a national treasure. “Since when is getting older an honor?,” she responds.
Tereza believes, erroneously, that she has three years left before she is taken to the Colony. Her boss tells her that the government lowered the age cap to 75 and summarily lays her off. Adding insult to injury: her daughter Joana (Clarissa Pinheiro) has been appointed by the government to take care of her affairs and Tereza will need her permission to do absolutely anything.
Teresa’s greatest wish is to fly on an airplane. Unable to book a flight with her savings, she hires the services of riverboat pilot Cadu (an at first unrecognizable Rodrigo Santoro) to take her to the town of Itacoatiora where private pilots fly ultralight planes. It is during the first trip down the Amazon where we discover the meaning behind the film’s title: a hallucinatory blue ooze left by a particular snail that allows the user to see their future. It goes without saying that that particular hallucinogen will play a key role in the film’s frantic, feverish and, in the end, hopeful climax.
She meets Ludemir (Adalino), the only pilot left in Itacoatiora…one with a broken ultralight aircraft. Tereza offers him money to fix it, most of which the pilot spends in gambling. Back in the city, Tereza almost gives up and leaves for the Colony. But after being forced to wear diapers on the bus that will take her there, she escapes and embarks on a final and more definitive journey thru the Amazon River, this time with the equally elderly and very cheerful Roberta (Cuban actress Miriam Socarrás) who earns a living selling digital Bibles from her boat.
They become an elderly Latin American version of Thelma and Louise in this Logan’s Run-type world, finding comfort and companionship in each other. Mascaro celebrates their bodies as they bathe each other, teach each other, and even dance and laugh together. It’s a kinship that goes beyond mere solidarity. There’s chemistry. Tereza is stoic, patient and stubborn while Roberta finds joy in everything; both are women determined to live life on their own terms.
While his neon-colored depiction of a conservative Brazil where cultish couples engage in evangelically approved partner-swapping in Divine Love was abrasive and biting, The Blue Trail is far more optimistic about the human condition. There are signs here and there of resistance: graffiti that reads “The elderly aren’t a commodity” and ”Where’s my grandfather?” show that not everyone is on board with the government’s policies. There’s the promise of freedom, of a new life that the river offers. And then there’s Tereza, who overcomes the odds by being her resourceful self and by showing others where they can stick their ageism. But Mascaro also shows how complacent and in some ways complicit the rest of the population is, from the condescending way some of these government employees and even relatives speak to their elders to rumors and accusations of snitches in the neighborhood.
It celebrates the resourcefulness and determination not only of the elderly but of each and every one of us in challenging the status quo in the smallest of ways. It is also a strikingly beautiful film: as shot by Guillermo Garza, the Amazon is more than a refuge for Tereza and Roberta. It represents freedom and opportunity. Some of the shots, particularly of an S curve in the river, are stunning. And Memo García’s score, full of xylophones, woodwind instruments, synthesized beats and even what sounds like sticks drumming on a bottle, is as mesmerizing and whimsical as the journey Tereza embarks on.
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