Bacurau review, Culture Whisper
In this tortured world of ours, isolation grows more appealing day by day. Imagine living in the middle of nowhere, away, far, far away, not dealing with issues outside of our control? Despite being a denial fantasy, it’s an awfully tempting one.
This isolated-village mentality crawls through Bacurau, the bizarre genre-clasher from Brazilian filmmakers Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles. The secluded town that titles the film is one of these nowhere places, filled with the heat and dust of a Sergio Leone Western, cut off from a suggestively dystopian world. And then there's the weird, psychotropic rituals that have a disturbing, Midsommar-like touch – starting with the funeral of a 94-year-old elder, whose coffin inexplicably fills with water.
Much of the peculiar pleasure of Bacurau is in its town and its folk: there’s a school, a chapel, a brothel, and even a history museum. We don’t have the pleasure of seeing inside many of them, lending an uncomfortable mystery to these buildings.
