Bacurau, written and directed by Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonca Filho - Seven out of 10

Bacurau, written and directed by Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonca Filho

Seven out of 10

Given that this motion picture has won the second most important cinematic prize of the year, the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival of 2019, where it was also nominated for the coveted Palme d’Or, which is the most relevant, although not at the box office, not appreciating this feature seems to be important in that it can show the shortcomings, the lack of substance, the narrow horizon, not of the film itself, but maybe of the cinephile, in this instance, the undersigned, which has not been just less than overwhelmed, but kept waiting for something spectacular, transcendent to happen to redeem the first half an hour, then the hour and finally the whole two hours, with only eleven minutes left to the final.

Alas, it seemed nothing but an ordinary horror movie, with a group of alien killers, apparently hired by a corrupt local official to eliminate voters that reject his ways – though one intriguing aspect was the campaign of this hoodlum, who had all the modern, latest technology available in the middle of a rather depressed community, that of Bacurau, with pickup trucks that have big screen at the back, where videos with the political candidature are aired, together with the more traditional amenities of campaigns, that we ‘benefit ‘from locally, where corrupt politicians buy votes with kilos of oil, flour and other foods.

Variety describes it best:

“Though shot in striking anamorphic widescreen and laced with references to John Carpenter, Sergio Leone and the like, Bacurau doesn’t quite work in traditional genre-movie terms. Rather, it demands the extra labor of unpacking its densely multilayered subtext to appreciate.”

A take that could explain why some viewers might not be able to enjoy this killing ride – by the way, one other inexplicable aspect is why the film is not labeled horror, given that quite a few depart, in rather gruesome circumstances and then some even lose their heads…literally – and that would be the inability to ‘unpack the many layers’…but then the question is are they worth unpacking?