ARÁBIA / ARABY (2017)

Haunting in presentation and story, this Brazilian film from co-writer/directors João Dumans and Affonso Uchoa begins with a feint.  We track thru mountainous countryside following a teenage boy as he bikes home (a quietly stunning uninterrupted take) where his kid brother is sick enough to be home from school.  A check-in from their aunt (she’s the rural visiting nurse; Mom’s working in the city) is followed by a couple of stops with the teen in tow and an emergency stop at a big industrial factory where a man has collapsed.  And it’s that man, not the teen, not the sick kid, not the aunt, who takes focus for the rest of the film after the boy finds a spiral pad where the factory worker (who unexpectedly died overnight) kept a journal.  We never get back to the brothers or the aunt, as if we changed partners mid-dance to follow the short, itinerant life as set down in ‘Christiano’s’ diary.  It should feel like a structural gimmick, but doesn’t.  We begin with a reckless event that puts ‘Cristiano’ in jail long enough to learn some important lessons from a fellow inmate.  Once out, it’s a series of short-lived/smalltime jobs; most hard labor, some decent enough, others taking advantage of him (tangerine picking leaves him paid in tangerines).  For a while, a steady factory job leads to a romantic relationship that might have altered the course of his life, but it peters out after a miscarriage.  Events, and a life, come and go with a circle of life quality sans goals or milestones.  Yet 30-ish non-pro Aristides de Sousa is overwhelmingly moving doing the most ordinary things, and the directing team have a knack for lining up one artlessly artful composition after another.  (They tend to place large blocky buildings to one side of the screen and keep movement on the other.)  If Edward Hopper had lived in rural Brazil, his paintings might have looked like this film.