Central Station
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Movie Reviews of Central Station
Movie Review: A brilliant showcase for Fernanda Montenegro
Summary: 5 Stars
It seems to me that foreign films in recent years have seen more than their fair share of stories in which a crusty old person bonds with some cute kid. Of course you can trace this plot way past "Cinema Paradiso" back to Chaplin in "The Kid," so it is certainly a tried and true tale to be told. Which makes films like "Central Station" all the more remarkable because you would think this mine had been played out long ago. This Brazilian film by director Walter Salles offers the exquisite Fernanda Montenegro, who richly deserved an Oscar nomination. Her character is Dora, a barren soul who makes her money by writing letters for illiterates in Rio de Janeiro's Central Station. Dora reads the letters to her roommate and then throws them away. But then she meets Josue, played by Vinicius de Oliveira, a nine-year-old boy whose mother has just died. Circumstances are contrived by which Dora takes Josue on a bus trip to return him to his father. This fateful journey does not consist of big confrontations but small moments, each of which begins to peck away at Dora's cold exterior. Perhaps the greatest testament to this performance is to simply point out that the cute kid never really manages to steal a scene away from Montenegro. More than anyone else, she elevates "Central Station" to its heights.Movie Review: An essential film in your collection!
Summary: 5 Stars
The initial sequence o the film is loaded of tragic grandiloquence; woman `s job in a railroad station consists in writing letters to beloved familiars or dear friends dictated by analphabet people. She is somehow a miracle worker, who transmits, livings, illusions and hopes from non future people to enrich and enlighten their painful lives.
But soon her biggest task will come for her. A lonely boy, wishes to make a journey for meting his father, and she will undertake her undeniable energy and spirit 's strength to feed the illusions and make those dreams come true for that love 's orphan human being.
This long Odyssey will carry us to lost horizons, to forgotten names of cities that hardly will figure in the map. A surrealistic but real world of sand, kaleidoscopic misery, severe economic restrictions, and above all moral poverty, where the time seems to have stopped for ever, because nothing happens.
After watching this movie, something inside voice must be claming that the Neo Realism Italian has reappeared. And that the only difference between the stolen bicycle and the vanished father is simply a few inches in the map of the world and sixty years of delay.
Movie Review: A real story about a country called BRAZIL
Summary: 5 Stars
Central Station was definitely the best brazilian movie I have ever seen in my life. It seems to me that part of the jury who decided which film should win the best foreign film oscar the year it was nominated for the award, didn't really understand that the movie was related to a very significant period of the brazilian history, which was the mass migration of Northeasterns to the south-East brazilian cities during the seventies and eighties.
Despite the excellent job done by Walter Salles ( filmmaker ) as well as Fernanda Montenegro and the nine-year-old Vinicios de Oliveira, the very emotional and also sometimes very sad movie unfortunately was not clear enought to the world that it was not just a beautiful storie of a lady ( Dora ) who was returning a poor boy ( Josue ) to his father, but that it was describing part of the real life of hundreds of brazilian Northeasterns that moved to the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo to escape from their extremely poor and dry homeland called SERTAO.
The modesty of Fernanda Montenegros role was definitely the highlight of the whole movie, which in my opinion was much more "down to earth" than Life is Beautiful or even Shakespeare in Love.
Movie Review: Finding lost souls...
Summary: 5 Stars
Young Brazilian boy (Josue) yearns to meet his father who left his Mother shortly after he was born. Josue and his illiterate Mother visit a letter writer (Dora) at a Rio train station to compose a letter to his Father in an attempt to reach out to him. Shortly after leaving the letter writer, a horrible accident leaves Josue homeless. Josue, a suspicious, crafty, sharp-tongued young boy finds his way back to Dora - and then through an unusual set of events (which we won't disclose here) - they depart on a journey to find his father.
Dora, played by Fernanda Montnegro, is magnificent in this film. She is a cynical, sad, middle aged former school teacher who you dislike early on in the film - to someone you begin to acquire compassion for - to a heartfelt ending where you can't help but feel admiration and warmth.
The story opens in Rio de Janeiro where you see spectacular pictures of the crowded trains, train stations, tenement housing - and then moves into the Brazilian countryside where the film-maker captures the desolation, the hardships and the simplicity of life. The film is wrapped in beautiful fitting piano music. Beautiful, moving film...
Movie Review: Look, the Pity of it...
Summary: 5 Stars
A very touching story. So some say it's a real story. It does look like so judging from the realistic way it is presented, it's very convincing indeed.From this movie one would be able to see a cross section of the life in Brazil. Their passionate religous faith,their helplessness, their economy, their outlook, various towns and everything...
Often one's fate is predestinated and hinged upon the change of a thought of somebody else no matter he/she is related to to you or not. Here the boy's fate turned at least twice. First he dropped the toy on the roadway which his mother decided to and subsequently bought to him causing her a fatal traffic accident. And then it turned upon the retired teacher who sold him and later changed her mind and decided to rescue him from the kids-monger and brought him back to his father who had earlier abandoned him living with another woman and died before meeting this boy...
But this is not exactly a tragedy. There was the meldramatic episode of the retired teacher with the truck driver. Even the relation between this retired teacher and the boy are so full of humantiy and tenderness.
Highly recommended.
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