Many filmmakers adapt books, but relatively few make movies that actually feel like books—that is, they achieve the sort of patience and interiority that come with reading. Judging from their second feature, Araby (which screens this week at the Film Center), Brazilian writer-directors João Dumans and Affonso Uchoa belong to this select group. Araby is literary through and through, from its ample voice-over narration to its self-conscious dramatic structure to its perceptive observations of time’s passing. Dumans and Uchoa encourage viewers to reflect on events as soon as they occur; one of their stylistic signatures is to let the hero’s narration play out over static shots of little or nothing happening. When characters do interact, they speak in a flat, declarative way that sounds like they’re reciting text. And the visual style evokes finely chiseled prose, with neatly arranged frames (which the directors generally hold for long enough to make a strong impression) that suggest complete sentences.
Dumans and Uchoa don’t overstate the message, however. Araby is unmistakably contemporary in its fashions, settings, and physical behavior; the similarities to the past seem found rather than manufactured. The directors affirm the film’s topicality early on, when one of Cristiano’s coworkers on the tangerine grove raps about his plight as an itinerant laborer; they also invoke the recent past in this section of the film when Cristiano learns that one of the farm’s older workers had been a labor organizer in the 70s and 80s. Both the rapper and the old man make a substantial impact on the film even though they appear in it for a relatively short time. Moreover, they draw the film out of its introspective, backward-looking mood—the depictions of friendship are immediate and timeless. Near the end of Araby, Cristiano finds himself friendless for the first time when he takes a factory job in the small city of Ouro Preto, and when he registers his loneliness in the narration, it feels as though the film has been suddenly drained of its lifeblood.
Directed by João Dumans and Affonso Uchoa. In Portuguese with subtitles. 97 min. Fri 8/17-Thu 8/23. Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800, siskelfilmcenter.org, $11.
