By Oana Vasiliu (Romania)
“Come a carnaval” are words written on a wall in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which appear for mere seconds in the film, Winter / Miracle, directed by Gustavo Beck and Željka Suková. The carnival means we’re given 60 minutes spliced with glimpses of anonymous characters’ lives who are something.
The film starts with a 20-minute silent black and white approach, presented through an almost constantly shaking camera in a moving train scene through Eastern Europe. Then we see the life of a city – the harbor, the market, its inhabitants in several situations, and even winter traditional dances. A strange noise erupts. Then a male voice comes from the clouds and tells us a story: a man travels to an unknown city looking for a woman who is continuously escaping through dreams. She appears to be running away, wanting to be someone else. From this point, the film transitions into colors and sounds while the action moves to Rio de Janeiro, giving the impression that the woman could be found there.
There’s a mixture of scenes with Christ the Redeemer, lush forests, beach fights between men and women, and the streets of Rio de Janeiro, all shuttling across the screen, interrupted from time to time by the woman’s voice praying to God. The movie attempts to present the viewer how carnival, a Christian holiday by definition, is transforming and how its religious message is being understood meanwhile. But instead delivers confusion and more questions to be asked, as docufiction films tend to do.
This movie transcends time back to the origin of carnival, which has a religious background: it represents a festive season which occurs immediately before Lent, a solemn religious obedience characterized by prayer, penance, repentance of sins, almsgiving, atonement and self-denial.
Using this technique, the directors sometimes capture reality – for example, we’re shown a song rehearsal of students, while simultaneously fictional situations are introduced in a narrative order. People fight on the beach with the same intensity as the singing children, giving us a new form of artistic expression.
Same technique reminds us from time to time of Catholic symbols, whether they are shown in the black and white part of the movie, or while enjoying the sin pleasures of life in the colorful part of it. Czech viewers will probably be more familiar with the movie, as some beach scenes are underscored by the song, “Crazy for You, Jesus,” which can be heard at a gathering of the Czech sect known as the Triumphal Centre of Faith.
The carnival ends with a party that happens simultaneously in a conference hall and on the beach, where people of all ages and nationalities dance and sing, Charlotte Gainsbourg’s 2012 song, Got to Let Go: “Got to realize when there’s nothing left to say / Good things come and go / One day you will know / You’ve got to let go, you’ve got to let go.” They didn’t necessarily respect the religious idea of what carnival really means, but this is contemporary interpretation of how they mark an overturning of the norms of daily life.
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Originally published here.
