Central Station
Brazil/France/Spain/Japan 1998
Reviewed by Nina Caplan
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Dora is a letter writer in Brazil's Central Station. She transcribes the loves and longings for Rio de Janeiro's illiterates and sends the results - or not - as she and her neighbour Irene see fit. When one of her clients is run over and killed, nine-year-old Josué is left motherless. Dora takes him in and sells him, but later steals him back. Dora and Josué go in search of his father Jisus, using the address of the letter Dora had written but failed to send for Josué's mother.
Dora tries to leave Josué on the bus but he follows her, forgetting his rucksack which contains Dora's money. Penniless, they are picked up by a kindly, religious truck driver who abandons them when Dora grows too friendly. By hitching they reach Jisus' house but he has sold it to buy alcohol. In the town, Josué saves them from destitution by suggesting Dora write letters for pilgrims. This time, she posts the letters.
By chance, they find Josué's two half-brothers. Their father has disappeared, but Dora reads the letter he had sent six months ago: he had gone to Rio in search of Josué's mother and the son he has never seen. The brothers realise he too must be dead. The next morning, while Josué sleeps, Dora takes the bus for Rio. Josué wakes up too late to prevent her departure. Both are left with a photo by which to remember one another.
Review
The trouble with road movies is they often go nowhere. Walter Salles' Central Station makes a virtue out of a common failing. It's a time-honoured scenario: haphazard travelling companions take a trip down Self-Discovery Highway, destination Understanding. For nine-year-old Josué, the search for his father marks his coming of age. His companion Dora, a retired teacher, rediscovers her humanity when she leaves her post writing letters for Rio's illiterates in Central Station to help him.
Salles (Foreign Land) takes recent upheavals in Brazil as his starting point and tackles individual quests within the context of the pain, loss and redemption of the whole community. Josué spends most of the film trying to join a community which is a metonym for the Brazilian society Dora abandoned along with her teaching career. As a letter writer, she interprets rather than instructs: if knowledge is her currency, she has exchanged generosity for avarice. She and Josué approach one another from opposite ends of the social spectrum: he seeks a place, she has abandoned hers. These two disparate but coinciding quests for rehabilitation are the film's heartbeat.
With his brothers, Josué will find a trade and a place in society. It is at his instigation that his mother Ana writes - via Dora - to her abusive drunken husband Jisus, tentatively pleading for reconciliation while the boy plays with a wooden top, symbol of his soon-to-be-lost childhood realm. He will lose top and mother simultaneously. His search for male role models will place him behind the wheel on a paternal truck driver's lap when he and Dora hitch a lift. Later, he will strike a similar pose with his older brother Moisés in front of the latter's lathe: the man behind, guiding the boy's hands. Under Moisés' guidance, Josué makes a top, no longer just a toy but a symbolic token of initiation into the community. This process begun, Dora leaves, having rediscovered the selflessness of the teacher/guide.
Like the trains, Central Station starts from the eponymous station and radiates outwards. People and trains move past with equal smoothness, making their random trajectories through the umber light that permeates the film. Characters collide with one another with seeming incoherence, like the letters which Dora posts, keeps or destroys according to her whim. Life is not linear. Dora tells Josué that one should always take buses because they have regular routes and preordained stops. She associates taxis with instability; her father's unfaithfulness; her mother's death. Dora's world contains its own insecurity: a perpetual liar whose lies are never believed, she imputes her own untruthfulness to others. "How do they measure a kilometre?" asks Josué during their journey. "They make it up," replies Dora.
Vinícius de Oliveira is extraordinary as the proud, vulnerable Josué, chin raised as the tears fall, dictating Dora's clothes and make-up and initiating macho sex talk as he tries to seem grown up. Like a teacher brushing up on a rusty foreign language, Dora relearns her moral grammar for his benefit and posts the letters she used to jettison. The film takes religion as its point of stability, replicating the developing country's conflict between industrialisation and tradition. The two travellers bounce from evangelist truck drivers to places of pilgrimage. In a stunning visual depiction of faith, the screen fills with points of light from pilgrims' candles. The family unit, seen as irrevocably lost, is idolised: Dora becomes a virgin mother to Josué, while his brothers create a shrine commemorating Ana and Jisus. When Dora leaves, the image which remains to comfort her and Josué for their mutual loss is a photo of them taken with a picture of a saint, a parody of the nuclear family, suggesting the duplication which replaces intimacy in a fragmented society. Salles takes this one step further: the result, a random microcosm of Brazilian life both intimate and eloquent, is Central Station.
Credits
- Producers
- Martine de Clermont Tonnerre
- Arthur Cohn
- Screenplay
- João Emanuel Carneiro
- Marcos Bernstein
- Based on the original idea by
- Walter Salles
- Director of Photography
- Walter Carvalho
- Editors
- Isabelle Rathéry
- Felipe Lacerda
- Production Designers
- Cássio Amarante
- Carla Caffé
- Music
- Antônio Pinto
- Jaques Morelenbaum
- ©Videofilmes/Mact Productions
- Production Companies
- Martine and Antoine de Clermont-Tonnerre/Jack Gajos/Elisa Tolomelli present a Videofilmes/Mact Productions/Riofilme co-production with the participation of Canal +/ The French Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Foreign Relations/Sogepaq
- With the support of the Sundance Institute and of N.H.K.
- This film was produced with the support of The Brazilian Ministry of Culture through the Audiovisual Development Bureau/The Rouanet Law for Cultural Tax Incentives
- Co-produced and concluded with funds from Rio de Janeiro City Hall/The Municipal Bureau of Culture, through Riofilme
- Institutional support from São Paulo City Hall
- Executive Producers
- Elisa Tolomelli
- Lillian Birnbaum
- Don Ranvaud
- Thomas Garvin
- Associate Producers
- Paulo Brito
- Jack Gajos
- Production Co-ordinator
- Beto Bruno
- Production Managers
- Marcelo Torres
- Afonso Coaracy
- Location Manager
- Selma Santos
- Pernambuco Art Researcher
- Almir de Azevédo
- Assistant Directors
- Kátia Lund
- Sérgio Machado
- João Emanuel Carneiro
- Rio:
- Vinícius Coimbra
- Script Supervisor
- Northeast:
- Adelina Pontual
- Casting
- Sérgio Machado
- Rio, Children:
- Denise del Cueto
- Northeast:
- José Bello
- Costumes
- Cristina Camargo
- Make-up
- Antoine Garabedian
Titles- Arane
- Musicians
- Cello:
- Jaques Morelenbaum
- Piano:
- Edu Morelenbaum
- Antônio Pinto
- Percussion:
- Marcos Suzano
- Rebec:
- Siba
- Acoustic Guitar/Viola/ Mandolin/Strings:
- Luiz Brasil
- Viola:
- Marie Christine S. Bessler
- Violin:
- João Daltro de Almeida
- Giancarlo Pareschi
- Bernardo Bessler
- Cello:
- Marcio Eymard Malard
- Double Bass:
- Denner de Castro Campolina
- Violins:
- Ricardo Amado da Silva
- Michel Bessler
- Violin/String Arrangements:
- Paschoal Perrotta Cordas
- Cello:
- Jorge Kundert Ranevsky
- Viola:
- Jesuína Noronha Passaroto
- Violin:
- José Alves da Silva
- Walter Hack
- Soundtrack
- "Toada e desafio" by Capiba, performed by Quinteto da Paraíba; "Preciso me encontrar" by Candeia, performed by Cartola; "Mama África" by/performed by Chico César; "Ruínas da Babilônia" by Fauzi Beydoun, performed by Tribo de Jah; "É deus por nós" by Fátima Leão, Alexandre Neto, performed by Zezé di Camargo e Luciano
- Sound
- Jean-Claude Brisson
- François Groult
- Bruno Tarrière
- Waldir Xavier
- Additional:
- Mark A. van der Willigen
- Sound Editor
- Waldir Xavier
- Foley
- Artists:
- François Lepeuple
- Olivier Marlangeon
- Cast
- Fernanda Montenegro
- Dora
- Marilia Pêra
- Irene
- Vinícius de Oliveira
- Josué
- Sôia Lira
- Ana
- Othon Bastos
- César
- Otávio Augusto
- Pedrao
- Stela Freitas
- Yolanda
- Matheus Nachtergaele
- Isaias
- Caio Junqueira
- Moisés
- Socorro Nobre
- 1st letter, Rio
- Manoel Gomes
- 2nd letter, Rio
- Roberto Andrade
- 3rd letter, Rio
Sheyla Kenia- 4th letter, Rio
- Malcon Soares
- 5th letter, Rio
- Maria Fernandes
- 6th letter, Rio
- Maria Marlene
- 7th letter, Rio
- Chrisanto Camargo
- 8th letter, Rio
- Jorsebá-Sebastião Oliveira
- 9th letter, Rio
- Sidney Antunes
- religious man, station
- José Pedro da Costa Filho
- stall owner
- Esperança Motta
- young prostitute, letter Rio
- Marcelo Carneiro
- thief
- Manula-Manuel José Neves
- Walkman owner
- Preto de Linha
- shoeshine man
- Mário Mendes
- João, Yolanda's husband
- Gildásio Leite
- man on bus
- Sõnia Leite
- Estelina Moreira da Silva
- women on bus
- Zezão Pereira
- bus driver
- Felícia de Castro
- cashier
- Harildo Deda
- Bené
- Marcos de Lima
- Bené's son
- Maria Menezes
- waitress
- Telma Cunha
- lipstick woman
- José Ramos
- pilgrims' driver
- Dona Luzia
- pilgrim singing in truck
- Bertho Filho
- pilgrim 1
- Edivaldo Lima
- Jessé's son
Antonieta Noronha- Violeta
- Rita Assemany
- Maria, Jessé's wife
- Gideon Rosa
- Jessé
- Dona Severina
- João Rodrigues
- pilgrims praying
- Nanego Lira
- preacher, northeast
- Antônio Marcos
- singer
- Iami Rebouças
- woman in photograph
- João Braz
- photo stall owner
- Antõnio dos Santos
- 1st letter, northeast
- Patrícia Brás
- 2nd letter, northeast
- Ingrid Trigueiro
- 3rd letter, northeast
- Inaldo Santana
- 4th letter, northeast
- José Pereira da Silva
- 5th letter, northeast
- Eliane Silva
- 6th letter, northeast
- Cícero Santos
- 7th letter, northeast
- Andréa Albuquerque
- 8th letter, northeast
- Everaldo Pontes
- 9th letter, northeast
- Diogo Lopes Filho
- cashier
- Fernando Fulco
- F-street man
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Buena Vista International (UK)
- 9,915 feet
- 110 minutes 10 seconds
- Dolby
- In Colour
- Subtitles