Pia Marais’ Transamazonia seeks to attach us to its characters and the setting containing them, however we depart the movie way more imprinted by the latter. The fourth function by the South African-born and -raised filmmaker (however whose work feels really, fittingly transnational), she goals to create an emotionally involving story, with rooting pursuits for sympathetic particular person and collective teams––right here, the indigenous Assurini folks of Trocará, Brazil. But it surely’s actually more practical as a temper piece, the thematic conflict between empiricism and superstition emanating like gun smoke from the depths of its jungle setting.
Marais is esteemed on the pageant circuit however has been much less well-served for theatrical distribution; her 2007 function The Unpolished, which gained the high prize at Rotterdam, is one in all the extra underrated debuts of its decade. A troublesome and tender memoir of rising up with very bohemian dad and mom, its extremely private have a look at a difficult, stimulating upbringing is echoed by Transamazonia’s personal plot, starting in the aftermath of a aircraft crash, the place a younger woman, Rebecca (performed as a youngster by Helena Zengel), is the miraculous sole survivor. Her mom, a nurse, has died, leaving her the sole custody of her skeezy, but oddly principled father Lawrence (filmmaker, efficiency artist, and irregular actor Jeremy Xido), who runs an evangelical mission largely attended by the indigenous inhabitants. With Rebecca’s survival attracting native media consideration and fascination, she’s alleged to have healing, faith-healing talents, which appear far-fetched. However the movie is appreciably unworried about attempting to debunk them.
Transamazonia is worried with unveiling Brazil’s distinctive stability of cultures, perception programs (extending to extractive capitalism), and locals, however it’s additionally undeniably an outsider’s view, giving it a kinship with the older-fashioned however nonetheless forceful views of Conrad’s colonial fictions and Claire Denis. The crux comes when Alves (Rômulo Braga), a logging magnate, seeks Lawrence and Rebecca’s assist to wake his spouse from a coma; with a slight echo of Winter Gentle, it is a process Lawrence is glad to simply accept in any case, fostering his ego as a self-styled “shaman of the jungle” (together with his duet folks performances with Rebecca at his sermons’ ends having an air of Charles Manson). However Rebecca herself is exploring her origins––e.g. her mom’s personal motive for initially being in the nation––and her consciousness is being raised by her burgeoning friendships with youthful members of the Assurini tribe, similar to Silas (Hamã Luciano); Alves is concerned in ransacking the forest for his enterprise, leaving the indigenous folks displaced, however claims he’ll relent if his spouse is cured.
It’s actually in the movie’s title: while it derives from the Brazilian Transamazonica Freeway, which cleave north and south components of the forest in two, Marais additionally sees her setting as a “zone” à la Tarkovsky’s Stalker, an enclave bathed in an identical nauseous inexperienced the place miracles are sought and metaphysical wishes addressed. However there’s no touring sequence: it’s the movie’s total actuality, perhaps enveloping that of Brazil, the place charismatic religion leaders maintain nonetheless huge sway and combine with the modern far-right liable for the nation’s Bolsonaro period.
However as seen by these connections, Transamazonia finds most success triggering this discourse and forging these associations in our thoughts––a triangulation of the Church, the land, and capital that turns the characters embodying them into overly symbolic and nearly hole figures. But Zengel’s eerie efficiency as a precocious baby convinces as she makes an attempt to go the threshold into maturity, unearthing her origins earlier than she needed to grow to be a preacher’s foil and unwilling earthly proof of the divine.
Transamazonia premiered at the 2024 Locarno Worldwide Movie Pageant.