When thinking of Brazilian cinema, you may recall mostly urban dramas dealing with crime, corruption and the poverty-laden favelas that ring the major cities - City of God, Bus 174, Madame Sata, Tropa de Elite, etc. Not so with MUTUM, which takes us to a part of Brazil we rarely see and may not even know exists, exposing a context of Brazilian culture beyond the guns and gangs in Sao Paulo or Rio.
MUTUM is the story of a family's disintegration as seen through the eyes of a 10-year-old boy, Thiago, set in the sertao, an isolated part of Brazil's interior. Mutum is the name of a small town in the remote area in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. Director Sandra Kogut spent more than a year in the region, getting to know the people and the locations. The filming location was an actual working farm, with shooting scheduled around daily meals, tending the cattle, etc.
All of the actors except Thiago's father were non-professional, drawn from the people Kogut met during her research. Amazingly, the children cast in MUTUM had never seen a movie, and neither had their parents, It's not just that they had never seen a movie - they had no concept of what a movie was, no idea of cinema, movie houses or the like.
In addition to the natural realism in the setting and the cast, there is no music in MUTUM. Besides the dialogue, the only sounds are ambient ones, those normally found in the setting or scene itself, such as animal and bird sounds, the wind and rain, or household noises. The complete absence of music adds to the realistic feeling it provides the viewer, as if we were watching something more like a documentary than a work of fiction.
Because of its naturalistic and semi-documentary style, MUTUM is not a film for the impatient. The pacing is measured, matched by the level of detail in character development. So at under 90 minutes, one can afford to drink in the countryside, the daily life, Thiago's evolution and the intricacies of familial relationships amidst events both great and small.
MUTUM Drama
Director Sandra Kogut, 2007, Brazil, 86 min, in Portuguese; English subtitles. [NR]
SUNDAY NOV 1, 4:00 social hour at 3:00
Filmmaker Andrea Torrice will lead the post-film discussion.
This is the original Brazilian trailer, without subtitles.
"One of the gems of this year's Lincoln Center Film Series, Brazil's MUTUM is the very model of how to make a movie about a poor, rural family - and make it consistently fascinating, real, vital and important. This remote place is so stunningly brought to life that we soon become a part of it. MUTUM, without ever raising its voice, has us hanging on every detail. This is a movie I could easily see again. And again." ~ James van Maanen, GreenCine.com
Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1965, director Sandra Kogut grew up in Brazil, spent more than a decade in France and now lives in the United States. A video artist and documentarian, her short films have won numerous awards at festivals worldwide and her work has been featured in many venues throughout the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Harvard Film Archive and the Forum des Images in Paris.
MUTUM is Sandra Kogut's first fiction feature and it is a tribute to her work that the it was an official selection by top-tier festivals such as Cannes, Toronto, Berlin, Pusan, London and Kiev.
Festivals & Notable Screenings
Winner Special Mention Sandra Kogut
Winner Best Film
Winner Best Feature Film
Winner Feisal Award -Directing
Nominated Grand Prize Best Actor
Winner Best Screenplay, A Martins-Costa, S Kogut
Winner Best Special Effects Mauricio Bevilaqua
Winner Best Film
Winner Best Director Sandra Kogut
Winner Best Actor Thiago Silva Mariz
Winner Best Actress Izadora Fernandes
Winner Best Art Direction Marcos Pedroso
Winner Best Cinematography Mauro Pinheiro
Winner Best Music Márcio Câmara
Winner Best Screenplay A Martins-Costa & S Kogut
Winner Second Prize First Work
Winner Crystal Lens Best Director
Winner Special Jury Award Thiago da Silva Mariz acting.
Winner Prize of the Ecumenical Jury
WinnerJury Award Best Cinematography Mauro Pinheiro Jr.
Nominated Jury Award Best Motion Picture
Winner Première Brazil Best Film Sandra Kogut
Winner Dioraphte Award, Directing
Cast
Thiago Da Silva Mariz ... Thiago
Wallison Felipe Leal Barroso ... Felipe
João Miguel ... Father
Izadora Fernandes Silveira ... Mother
Rômulo Romeo Garcia Braga ... Uncle
Paula Da Silva ... Rosa
Maria Leal De Macedo ... Grandmother Izidra
Eduardo Da Luz Moreira ... Man from the City
Credits
Sandra Kogut … Director
Flávio R. Tambellini … Producer
Laurent Lavolé … Producer
Isabelle Pragier … Producer
Sandra Kogut … Screenwriter
Ana Luiza Martins Costa … Screenwriter
Mauro Pinheiro Jr. … Cinematographer
Sérgio Mekler … Editor
Márcio Câmara … Sound/Sound Designer
This adaptation of João Guimarães Rosa's Campo Geral is a calm, reflective and tender ode to a child's loss of innocence. Mutum is the story of a family's disintegration as seen through the eyes of a 10-year-old boy, who in turn learns something about the distinction between a child's expectation of happiness and unconditional love, on the one hand, and the realities of an imperfect and often unfair world, on the other.
Ten-year-old Thiago lives with his family on an isolated farm in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The film's title is the name of a remote area in the Sertão, but it also refers to someone who does not talk. Mutum is a beautiful world, but it is also a world of secrets and things left unspoken, a violent world, and a world in which bad things (like Felipe's death) can happen randomly, without any apparent reason. In this coming-of-age narrative, each detail of a character is significant, especially with respect to its main character, Thiago.
Unaware that he has vision problems, Thiago is only interested in what is within his reach and limited field of vision. But his sensitivity allows him to see the emotional displays around him with painful clarity. Separations and betrayals force him to slowly develop a new awareness of the complexity of human relationships, while his bedtime conversations with his brother reveal a fresh curiosity about life's serious questions. But life is filled not only with curiosity and youthful discovery, there is the reality of his parent's unhappy marriage and his father's temper and impatience - all of which are one day changed by a chance encounter and unexpected gift.
Thiago's discovery near the end of the film that he is near-sighted, underscores metaphorically something about his journey so far: He has come to understand things he was not initially aware of, much as by putting on the doctor's eye glasses he comes to see his environment with a new clarity he had not suspected was possible. Just before leaving Mutum for good, he asks the doctor for his glasses again and spends a long moment gazing at his home one last time but also with, as it were, new eyes.
Director Sandra Kogut captures childhood innocence with playful, poetic solemnity, and her plotting of the story allows us to see the landscape surrounding Thiago just as it reveals itself to him in unexpected ways.