THE HOUSE OF SAND - 4
THE HOUSE OF SAND (115 min) (Portuguese: Casa de Areia), winner of numerous prestigious awards, is a 2005 Brazilian film directed by Andrucha Waddington. It stars real life mother and daughter Fernanda Montenegro and Fernanda Torres, who are considered national treasures of Brazilian cinema. The House of Sand was filmed entirely on the coast of northern Brazil, inside Lençóis Maranhenses National Park.
In 1910, pregnant Áurea (Torres) along with her mother, Maria (Montenegro) arrive at a remote, desert-like part of the Brazilian state of Maranhão—called the Lençóis Maranhenses—where her fanatical husband Vasco de Sá (Ruy Guerra) has relocated the family from the state's capital, São Luís, to start a farm. Desperate and pregnant, Aurea yearns to escape from the desert of sand and return to the city. Calamity strikes and the two women find themselves stranded. Eventually, they settle among the constantly shifting sands of the desert and Aurea finds peace, but her daughter, Maria, longs to explore the world beyond the dunes. At one point, however, Áurea, following a fresh trail in the sand by herself, sets out to return her family to civilization. She finds an international scientific expedition that, for the purpose of observing an annular solar eclipse on May 29, 1919, had come to the remote desert to verify claims made by Albert Einstein's theory of General Relativity concerning the curvature of space. This expedition, headed by British astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington, is a historical fact. (One party observed the eclipse on the island Príncipe, to the west of equatorial Africa's coast; another did the same in Brazil. However, the Brazilian location was not Maranhão but rather Sobral, Ceará.) The film combines the internal and surreal with the historically accurate. “We as viewers are left to sort out the broadly surreal from the minutely exact. We must decode the poetry of this film for ourselves. And, as with poetry, appreciation for this film will likely grow with reflection and repeated viewings.
'House of Sand' is a little jewel with hidden facets.”
Critics write (from 2006):
· “This is a stunning film, visually and emotionally. Although rooted in a forsaken sandy wasteland, the film is a metaphor for how circumstance locates us and how we can or cannot get out of the place in which we find ourselves.”
· “A shimmering masterwork, profoundly moving. The House of Sands succeeds magnificently in transporting viewers to a place – both geographic and stylistic – they wouldn't have ventured to on their own.”
· “At first “House of Sand” may seem like a stark tale of survival, but a surprisingly lush and colorful romance blossoms in its bleak and gorgeous setting.”
· “To me it is a haunting little masterpiece I will not soon forget. The standout acting, the stunning yet eerie landscape setting, the subtle plot, and the music are reminiscent of Kurosawa's deeply minimal but hugely philosophical dramas. Add to that, a brilliantly BIG viewfinder of a camera and a really superb space science sub plot this movie is almost epic. I was surprised by it's simplicity and astonished by it's depth. The director may be young but his soul is ever so old.”
August 11, 2006
Movie Review
‘House of Sand’: A Mother, Her Daughter, and Brazil’s Bleak Yet Lovely Land by A.O. Scott
If anything, the title of “House of Sand” is an understatement. This lovely film, directed by Andrucha Waddington (“Me You Them”), takes place in a corner of northern Brazil that is a veritable universe of dry, swirling white dust. Like the main characters — three women of successive generations exiled from a softer, more accommodating life in the city — you grow accustomed to this landscape after a while, and come to appreciate its beauty. But at first it seems about as hospitable as the surface of Mars: gritty, windy, almost actively hostile to human habitation.
Mr. Waddington and his director of photography, Ricardo Della Rosa, use a wide-screen format and long, angled shots to capture the harsh sublimity of this desert, where the sand is relieved by strips of vegetation and an occasional glimpse of the nearby ocean. The land is such a presence in the film that it almost takes on the status of a character. It’s not just the setting for the struggles of the women, but an active agent in their destinies and the object of their loathing, their terror and, ultimately, their love.
Filmed near the Lençóis Maranhenses National Park, “House of Sand” is not without its share of human grandeur, since it stars Fernanda Montenegro and Fernanda Torres, a mother and a daughter who happen to be among the national treasures of Brazilian cinema. They undertake not just two performances, but a suite, the harmonies and counterpoints of which are both subtle and breathtaking.
At the beginning Ms. Montenegro is Dona Maria, a weary matriarch accompanying her pregnant daughter, Áurea (Ms. Torres), on a trek into the middle of nowhere. The year is 1910, and Áurea is following her monomaniacal husband, who holds the deed on a few acres of howling nothingness.
Before long, Áurea’s husband’s fellow travelers have departed, and he himself has restored the phrase “bitten the dust” to its literal meaning. For help the women turn to their only neighbors, descendants of runaway slaves who populate a leafy fishing village. One of them, Massu (Seu Jorge), occupies a role in Maria and Áurea’s household somewhere between servant and husband.
As the years pass — the full span of the narrative stretches 60 years — the human relationships rise to the surface, in particular the almost wordless, emotionally complicated bond between Áurea and Massu. At different points in the story, the actresses change roles, with Ms. Montenegro settling into her daughter’s outgrown characters. She appears as Áurea in a chapter that takes place in the 1940’s, during which Ms. Torres plays a second Maria, Áurea’s daughter, who has grown up wild and angry, resentful of her mother and remote from the customs and traditions that helped Áurea and the first Maria to endure.
The story that links these moments has the clarity of a fable and the sentimental enchantment of a magic-realist novel. Mr. Waddington, who brilliantly evoked the dry, brown Brazilian backlands in “Me You Them,” brings out the psychological nuances of the story (the script is by Elena Soárez) even as he respects its bold, primal emotions and the almost classical dignity of the main characters. At first “House of Sand” may seem like a stark tale of survival, but a surprisingly lush and colorful romance blossoms in its bleak and gorgeous desert setting.