Pater / Patria: Central Station and the Search for Identity in Post-Collor Brazil

• Autores: Geoffrey Mitchell
• Localización: Romanitas, lenguas y literaturas romances, ISSN-e 1937-5697, Vol. 5, Nº. 1, 2010
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo (html)
• Resumen

  • Released in 1998, Central do Brasil (Central Station), received accolades from critics as well as an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film. The film is an allegory that eschews the typical, aesthetic representation of the sertão; that is to say, previous directors chose to present this space in film with bright, intense colors that emphasized the intensity of the sun and the plight of droughts. In Central do Brasil, Walter Salles opted to portray the sertão as a vital, important locus devoid of the negative representations in previous Brazilian films. In Salles’s film, the sertão can literally be a refuge for the inhabitant of the vast, cold, and frequently violent, urban centers of eastern Brazil. In essence, the return to the sertão is in opposition to the relocation of the retirantes who previously abandoned the region due to drought, thus shifting the demographics toward the city. Metaphorically, the pilgrimage to the sertão — more particularly Josué’s search for his father following his mother’s untimely death in Rio de Janeiro and Dora’s escape from her illicit business as a letter writer — is a search for a collective, national identity and meaning in the years following and during the economic and political uncertainties of the Collor and Cardoso administrations. Both literally and metaphorically, the father figure is a central figure in Central Station, one who — in many ways — continues to elude those who seek him.