2020 In Review: Bacurau
* * * * *
Hailed as one of the best foreign films of the year, and arguably the most flat-out ambitious picture of 2020 (even more so than Tenet), Brazilian epic Bacurau is like an angry filibuster being shouted through a megaphone, at once exposing the corruption of South America's politics, while creating harsh commentary on American violence, yet blanketed in a wholesome morale on the generational importance of family, togetherness, and (if necessary) coming together as a community to brutally slaughter the enemies of your ancestors.
From the starry opening credits staged in front of the cosmos like a 1980s PBS program, down to the closing images of an intense village burial, writer-directors Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles do their damndest to present futuristic Bacurau like the most grand and significant South American movie of all time. For better or worse, Bacurau attempts to throw everything at the walls of its titular fictitious village, from random sex and gratuitous violence to innocent children playing; old ladies pulling out glocks from their frocks, and a wicked, scar-faced villain who looks like a cross between Terence Stamp and David Byrne.
For taking place in the future, Bacurau is a tonally confusing piece ironically painting a sobering portrait of Brazil as a country stricken with poverty rather than flying cars, but also a future where drones look like flying saucers, and the bad guys wear evil AirPods and shiny tracksuits that make them look like the neighbors from Christmas Vacation. There's a dude named Lunga who's basically an extra from The Warriors; an un-caged Rufio, shirtless with a bleached blonde mullet, wearing beaded necklaces and bracelets and lives in a gigantic watchtower, which communicates via torchlight. Lunga kills bad guys with a machete and is easily the most badass representation of this absolutely bananas-ass version of future Brazil.
Bacurau is an important film in its representation of a strong community fighting against wicked political warfare, but the movie's also all over the place, perhaps taking itself too seriously, only a couple over-the-top moments and one musical number away from being a Brazilian Bollywood film.
Grade: C+
