Central Station
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Fernanda Montenegro, Marília Pęra, Othon Bastos, Soia Lira, Vinícius de OliveiraBrand: MONTENEGRO,FERNANDA
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Portuguese (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 2.35:1
Running Time: 113 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-07-13
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Product features:
- Portuguese with English subtitles
- Interactive Menus
- Audio Commentary by Walter Salles, Arthur Cohn, and Fernanda Montenegro
- Talent and Filmographies
- Widescreen format
Movie Reviews of Central Station
Movie Review: Masterful Montenegro Dominates Salles' Career-Defining Road Movie
Summary: 5 Stars
Like Gena Rowlands in this country (who ironically did a similar film, 1996's "Unhook the Stars"), Brazil's Fernanda Montenegro is a masterful actress who inhabits her characters wholly with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of personal depth. In this beautifully filmed 1998 film directed by Walter Salles, she offers a superbly realistic portrayal of an aging, embittered spinster named Dora, who earns money by writing letters for illiterate passers-by at Rio de Janeiro's Central Station. At the outset, she is a petty thief who takes the letters and decides with her friend Irene which ones to post if at all. Her dull world changes when Josué, the nine year-old son of a woman for whom Dora has written a letter, suddenly becomes orphaned when the woman is killed by a speeding bus. The letter was to be sent to Josué's father to reunite the family. Now his plight gradually becomes Dora's concern, and over the course of the film, her destiny.
What Salles does with great dexterity is show the gradual closeness between Dora and Josué without resorting to any obvious sentimental plot devices, as neither is particularly sympathetic at the beginning and use their surly, obstinate personalities as protective shells. Even though this story has an overly familiar structure, Salles and screenwriters Joăo Emanuel Carneiro and Marcos Bernstein bring a heavy dose of neo-realism within the unfamiliar, non-tourist locales used. It's all reminiscent of Vittorio de Sica's and Roberto Rosellini's classic post-WWII work in Italy like "The Bicycle Thief" and "Open City". With his later film, 2004's wonderful "The Motorcycle Diaries" and now slated to film Jack Keroauc's seminal "On the Road", Salles is obviously becoming known as a master of the road movie, and it is easy to see why with this work. Helping considerably is the stunning cinematography of Walter Carvalho, who presents vividly inhabited tableaux with each new phase of the journey from the bustle of inner-city Rio to the open roads to the religious pilgrimage to the new shoebox-style settlement.
But it is Montenegro who dominates the proceedings as she gradually develops a character who earns our sympathy economically and honestly as she makes every moment count. For example, as she senses herself becoming attracted to Cesar, the religious truck driver, she applies a stranger's lipstick with a quivering hesitation that is almost as heartbreaking as the realization she faces moments later that he has left for good. A real shoeshine boy picked by Salles, Vinícius de Oliveira plays Josué with equal economy and responds to Dora's actions with realism that alternates between touching and frustrating. Smaller roles are filled expertly with Marília Pęra amusingly ebullient as Irene and Othon Bastos compellingly conflicted as Cesar. The climax comes a bit out of left field with the introduction of new characters that provide some amount of closure to Josué's fate and wrap up many of the open plot threads, but the somewhat pat turn does not undermine the genuine strength of the film.
The DVD provides a nice extra with Montenegro, Salles, and producer Arthur Cohn contributing invaluable audio commentary in English. Salles and Cohn talk about the sources of inspiration for the movie as well as the more technical aspects including the rigors of location shooting with masses of amateur actors and a minimum of art direction and constructed sets. Montenegro speaks less, but like her performance, makes all her comments resonate. It's interesting how variations of the film's basic plot have come up in recent years - for instance, Jan Sverák's 1996 "Kolya" from the Czech Republic and Takeshi Kitano's 2000 "Kikujiro" from Japan - and this one certainly holds up well as a prototype.
Summary of Central Station
Two very unlikely souls, a motherless young boy and a lonely retired school teacher become inextricably linked and form an uncommon bond as they venture from the bustling city to Brazil's remote northeast region in search of the boy's father.Genre: Foreign Film - Portugese
Rating: R
Release Date: 13-JUL-1999
Media Type: DVD
In the opening scenes of Central Station, colorful crowds of Brazilians stream into and out of a Rio de Janeiro train, pushing through doors and windows. You're immediately pulled into the brutal vitality of a nation in motion, setting the tone for a picturesque road movie that charts Brazil's renaissance in a little boy's search for his father and an old woman's emotional reawakening. When we first meet Dora (Fernanda Montenegro), this frozen-hearted, sour-faced woman is the epitome of immobility: day after day, she sits in the train station selling her letter-writing skills to all comers, but often doesn't bother to mail these precious messages. When a woman who's paid Dora to write a pleading note to her son's long-missing dad gets run over by a bus, the child, Josue (Vinicius de Oliveira), is up for grabs. (The summary execution of a thieving street kid--in longshot--underscores the seriousness of this waif's plight.) After an abortive attempt to sell Josue for a new TV, the aspiring couch potato finds herself reluctantly propelled into an occasionally Fellini-esque odyssey through the hinterlands of Brazil's sertäo, where Dora and her sidekick find unexpected faith and family. Former documentary filmmaker Walter Salles (Foreign Land) mixes magic with realism in his appreciation of striking faces and places, but Central Station is primarily fueled by the tough/tender performances of Montenegro, Brazil's Judy Dench, and de Oliveira, an airport shoeshine boy Salles cast over 1,500 other hopefuls. (Montenegro was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, and Central Station was in the running for Best Foreign Language Film.) No cloyingly cute child-star, de Oliveira plays Josue as a bracingly idiosyncratic brat. And watching Dora's face and soul slowly, unwillingly unclench as she gets back in motion--and emotion--is potent pleasure, even if Salles's trip does dead-end in soap opera as his Brazilian pilgrim's progress winds down. --Kathleen Murphy
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