Epic shots encapsulate this picture like a fine crystal prism. The way Pedro Costa films ‘Juventude em Marcha’ is brave, unusual, angular, and frequently gnarly. While his characters sit and perhaps and stare off into the distance, Costa constructs shots that reflect a deeper Self…

So, you get arresting, epic shots of mainstay ‘Ventura’ outside his daughter’s squabbled shack, who stands elegantly, somehow stoic, amidst his environment. His expression is calm, gentle, but he has an enduring boldness and earnestness that, in the context of the situation he’s in, seems out of place and peculiar. But also magical. Ventura is a beautifully constructed character in fabulous ways, and unique. He is the great “Untouched One of Lisbon” =). And while framing the man, standing erect and ready, Costa inserts the most intense, discordant diagonal lines and shapes that makes him look like an indelible hero rising out of some great obscured pain. The sense of calm we get watching him is one of the film’s major successes.

Still, alternating with this, Pedro Costa will place Ventura in almost painfully timelessness and environments of extreme disrepair, both physically and psychologically. For instance, the (now) recovering addict form Costa’s earlier film In Vanda’s Room exists as a perpetually coughing woman in an over-lit, over-bright room of sunshine and fluorescent fixtures. There is a distant sense of boredom contained in the washed out white of Vanda’s room that makes the space glow like a secret retreat. Rooms like this one, and the scene filmed in her kitchen, contrast with the darkened, highly dramatized rooms from the rest of the film. When Ventura is outside in the demolished landscape of fallen buildings, Costa films him with a new sense of authority, in contrast to the weary, tireless malaise his stature hinted at while in Vanda’s room. Pedro Costa gives Ventura plenty of low-angle king shots to balance out this place of distant sad. By the end, after we’ve spent some time under Ventura, he feels positively transcendent.

As a note: The museum scenes inside and out are among the film’s most powerful visual moments, but this film is an instant favorite for me not because of the visual wizardry alone. This film obviously has the potential to cause a spiritual experience in the viewer; it did with me… Also, I can honestly say I haven’t seen anything like it before.

Is Pedro Costa a magician ?