#509: COSTA, Pedro: Ossos (1997)
LETTERS FROM FONTAINHAS: THREE FILMS BY PEDRO COSTA {Spine #508}
Ossos [1969]
Spine #509
DVD
DVD
The first film in Pedro Costa's transformative trilogy about Fontainhas, an impoverished quarter of Lisbon, Ossos is a tale of young lives torn apart by desperation. After a suicidal teenage girl gives birth, she misguidedly entrusts her baby's safety to the troubled, deadbeat father, whose violent actions take the viewer on a tour of the foreboding, crumbling shanytown in which they live. With its reserved, shadowy cinematography by Emmanuel Machuel (who collaborated with Bresson on L'argent), Ossos is a haunting look at a devastated community.
97 minutes
Color
Color
Stereo
in Portuguese
1:66:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2010
Director/Writer
Pedro Costa was 39 when he wrote and directed Ossos.
Other Costa films in the Collection:
Other Costa films in the Collection:
The Film
Costa’s debt to Ozu and Bresson is obvious from the start; the pillow shots, and long static holds of places where humans have just departed the scene — a play of memory, lost emotional resonance, a bid to the viewer to pay attention to the mysterious beauty and reality of the mundane …
But unlike Ozu or Bresson, Costa isn’t interested in the middle class. Oxford defines a slum as
“a squalid and overcrowded urban street or district inhabited by very poor people”
The fact that very few filmmakers devote six hours of cinema to such people should not merely be accepted as a novelty; but rather Costa creates (in this first part) — and then dispenses with — characterizations, and shows us these people as living beings — flawed, frayed and disintegrating before our eyes — without judgment or editorial comment.
He goes further than Ozu or Bresson with the filmic stillness, imbuing his shots with a searing sense of realism, punctuated by a carefully composed soundtrack of — not music — but ambient noise from the people’s chatter and the machinery being used to demolish their homes.
**
This first film of the Trilogy differentiates itself from the next two by having created fictional characters from the actors (Vanda Duarte plays Clotilde; her sister, Zita plays a friend) …
There’s even the outlines of a plot (the absence of which more or less defines the second and third films) — such as it is — concerning Tina (Maria Lipkina) and the father of their baby (Nuno Vaz).
Despite having begun the film with the traditional 35mm cameras and a full film crew, it seems that the neighborhood rebelled against his methods (refusing to let the trucks in), which apparently nudged Costa towards the idea of shooting with a lone digital camera and using only natural light and sound.
The running time of 97 minutes is just right. The next film in the Trilogy would be nearly twice as long!
Film Rating (0-60):
The Booklet
Forty-eight page booklet featuring essays by critics Cyril Neyrat, Ricardo Matos Cabo, Luc Sante, Thom Andersen, and Mark Peranson, as well as a reprint by film historian Bernard Eisenschitz.
56
The ExtrasThe Booklet
Forty-eight page booklet featuring essays by critics Cyril Neyrat, Ricardo Matos Cabo, Luc Sante, Thom Andersen, and Mark Peranson, as well as a reprint by film historian Bernard Eisenschitz.
Neyrat:
“The last fires of a dying European aesthetic glow in Ossos: an elliptical plot, highly composed wide shots held for a long time, the generally unmoving and silent presence of characters who preserve their mysterious density until the end. But a new energy is blowing on the embers, that of a brutal reality that auteur cinema had always avoided confronting: that impossible but oh-so-real location, those desperate people, enraged and resisting, suddenly visible, radiating a dark light. What is striking, when we consider the films that came after, is the extent to which Costa is already taking flight, despite the weight of traditional filmmaking. The people of Fontainhas — Vanda, Zita, and the others — play characters, embody parts. But Costa is already filming their pure presence in space, their strength, their resistance, capturing what is beneath the actors, the truth of the individuals.”
Sante:
“Costa muffles his drum, deemphasizing all he most dramatic moments, relegating pivotal occurrences behind an unseen curtain between shots. Most of what actually happens on-screen is transitional, almost as if Costa were selecting the very things that a more conventional movie would elide.” [ala Ozu — LS] …
Andersen:
“Along with Dreyer and Bresson, Costa is a master of what Gilles Deleuze has called ‘affective framing,’ a manner of forming images usually associated with contemplative close-ups but that can be applied to large spaces by rendering them as if they were faces.”
**
”His sister’s black, but she is sho’nuff pretty
Her skirt is short, but Lord her legs are sturdy
To walk to school, she’s got to get up early
Her clothes are old, but never are they dirty …”
— Stevie Wonder; Living For the City from Innervisions
Peranson:
“When asked by one of those celebrity journalists at a sparsely attended Cannes press conference if he’d ever considered making an adaptation, Pedro Costa memorably replied: ‘Yeah, I’ve always wanted to make a film based on Innervisions.’ This may sound like a playful evasion, and the concept of Stevie Wonder adapted to a cinema set in the slums of Lisbon more than a little far-fetched, but in fact, with the Vanda trilogy, one could argue that Costa did just that, presenting a series of works that might as well be dubbed Songs in the Key of Lisbon Life.”
None.
Video conversations
Between Costa and filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin.
Costa discusses his initial forays to Fontainhas, the producer’s demand for a script (which he never fulfilled), and the switch from a budget-conscious production with a full film crew to the next-to-nothing budget with a DV camera and natural light.
Video interviews
Video interviews
With critic João Bénard da Costa
A deep dive into the meanings of Ossos — the literal meaning and transformation of the word “bones” and how Costa’s film relates this to his characters, to the unseen poverty, to the always present motif of approaching death.
and cinematographer Emmanuel Machuel.
Who discusses the challenges and misunderstood ideas behind the task of shooting this film. He gives deserving credit to the sound design, by Henri Maïkoff.
Video essay
Video essay
By artist Jeff Wall.
Incisive essay accompanied by scenes from the film. For example,
“The scenario of Ossos is interesting because it’s not too clear; it’s not too organized. In a lot of standard filmmaking, every character who appears, every object that appears, every event that takes place is dedicated to the clarification and resolution of some kind of plot; some story with some theme. What’s striking about Ossos is that that’s often not the case; there are characters in the film who do nothing, who almost don’t participate in the story at all. They are present in repeated shots, but don’t do anything; they occasionally listen to the conversations of other people, observe the action and disappear. They’re not background figures — they’re not extras — they seem to be very important and yet they don’t have any material effect on the course of the action. I found that striking — that life was too complex to be included in the film as a whole.”
Gallery
Of photos by Mariana Viegas.
B&W.
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