2012 MUBI World Cup Voting, Match #25: Brazil (Limite) vs. South Africa (Felix in Exile)
Brazil (Limite) 1 – South Africa (Felix in Exile) 0
Elton’s an admirer of Kentridge- that’s how i discovered him- and he does deserve to be better known, but Limite has the edge
Brazil (Limite) 1 – South Africa (Felix in Exile) 0
when do we get a holiday?
When it’s over.
Brazil (Limite) 1 – South Africa (Felix in Exile) 0
Great visuals in Peixoto’s film, and a wonderful soundtrack with it.
Brazil (Limite) 1 – South Africa (Felix in Exile) 0
Limite : This is supposed to be Peixoto’s only film and he seems to have made sure that it was a masterpiece. If I had to describe this film I would be tempted to post screenshots of its visuals which I am sure some of us will post later in this thread. I haven’t seen such odd camera angles, dolly’s and tracking shots in a film and in almost every shot he makes the objects in the frame appear to be alive. I must specially mention the trees that look fascinating in this film. The visuals have an almost hypnotic power in them that keep you glued through the flimsy storyline. The fact that this film has remained largely unseen over the years makes it special for us to get a chance to watch it in this world cup. Thanks a lot herbie for submitting it as well to those who made the film available to us.
Felix in Exile : This was a very good film as well but as it often happens with animations and short films, they finish too quickly and usually you need to have enough background knowledge for doing justice as a reviewer. I liked what I saw and it was pretty effective in its short running time. The explanations on the film’s page gave me some idea about what I saw but it just wasn’t enough for me to get passionate about it in a single viewing. I feel its pointless submitting such esoteric stuff for the cup if the submitters aren’t going to put some effort to write an intro thread for the film.
Brazil (Limite) 1 – South Africa (Felix in Exile) 0
Two subtle works, both dealing with death, remembrance, longing, and temporality. One uses the cinematic palette of the European avant-garde, the other uses a highly personal animated style. Both are abstract and allusive, but both project the poetic vision of their artists. Because you need some background to understand these two works, I’ll go into some detail here (if anyone is interested).
To get a handle on Limite, you need to see the Andre Kertesz photo that Peixote saw in Paris that inspired his film:
Peixote’s version:
This is a rather difficult work to penetrate, so I did a little digging to fully engage this work and understand the enigmatic story. I would have rated this film even higher, thanks to the great visuals, but the flashback sequence made little sense to me until I did some reading on the film. See:
On Brazillian Cinema
Mario Peixote
Limite seems to be a reflection on how we are each trapped inside our own desires, oblivious to the natural beauty around us. In the flashback scenes, hard to correlate, the anonymous characters in Limite wander around the city trapped, and three of them end up some how on the rowboat endlessly drifting. Each person is shackled or handcuffed to their narrow reality, like the image of the woman that begins and ends the film. The cinematographer, Edgar Brazil (or Brasil) must be given credit for fully realizing Peixote’s mad dream of a film. Obviously, Peixote had studied the European avant-garde of his time, but Peixote creates a sort of anti-narrative, or circular construction, to further reflect how his characters are figuratively and literally caught in a fate they can’t escape. Many inventive, hypnotic shots from various angles: shots from high above, severe close-ups, shots of feet, shots of waving grass, shots of the sea – either menacing or iridescent.
This is a film of endless possibilities, but always ending in the eternal return of death – without transfiguration. Like the scene where the footprints in the sand are erased by the sea, the film itself erases its narrative as it goes, just leaving the numbness and despair of those trapped on the rowboat.
The use of the haunting original score for the film makes one appreciate the matching of image with the music that much more. That Peixote never made another film is a tragedy for world cinema, as he had a distinct and unique visual imagination. This has been a true mind-boggling discovery for me. Glad this film was preserved. Thanks to the director Walter Salles for continuing to keep Peixote’s memory alive.
Kendrick’s animated short film (again, why is this competing against a two hour feature?) was a subtle examination of the power of longing, as the artist dreams of his home country of South Africa and its recent violent past. Kendrick’s subtle use of charcoal images that seem to magically transform into one another enhances the message. The image where the black land surveyor peers through her lense at the exiled artist is at the heart of this film.
^Thanks a lot for those links.
yes, thanks for those, oxy. an absolutely stunning film but a bit impenetrable without a few clues. i love this period of the late silents and this is such a unique and gorgeous example, with a beautiful restoration too. so thanks everyone for the opportunity to see this. also enjoyed the animated film, in a lovely rough drawing style, and i’ll look for more of the director’s work. i feel bad he drew what seems one of the worst possible slots in this competition
brazil (limite) 1 – south africa (felix in exile) 0
that’s 6-0 brazil
brazil (limite) 0 — 1 south africa (felix in exile)
peixoto might have only made one film, but he was totally immersed…
from imdb:
“In 1927, at the age of 19, Peixoto spent almost a year at the “Hopedene School” in Willingdon near Eastbourne, Sussex, where he discovered a certain inclination towards acting and developed a strong appreciation for the cinema. Peixoto would return to Europe in 1929 with the expressive intension to see the latest cinema productions. Fascination for the cinema, contacts with critic/ writer Octavio de Farias, cameraman Edgar Brazil, director Adhemar Gonzaga, (Peixoto participated in the shooting of “Barro Humano” (Human Clay, a film from 1927) and the discussions held in the Chaplin Club, laid the ground work for the idea of making his own movie, where he would figure as an actor. The Chaplin Club, made up of a loose circle of friends, was founded in 1928 and until 1930 published a magazine called “The fan” dedicated to debates on the esthetics of silent cinema."
(sussex? i wonder if he lost his innocence amongst the same haystacks and woods that i did)
(sussex? i wonder if he lost his innocence amongst the same haystacks and woods that i did)
@magpies
peixoto supposedly experimented with homosexuality in those days. Is there a connection there as well? :P
ah, that old chestnut, square oasthouses or round?
Brazil (Limite) 1 – South Africa (Felix in Exile) 0
I’m glad some found the links helpful.
Another interesting feature in Limite is the short Chaplin segment in the film. According to an article highlighted above, the man who plays the pianist at the screening is Brutus Pedreira, who also picked the music to accompany the film. Peixote (who appears in the film as the jilted husband at the cemetary) was a member of the local Chaplin appreciation society. Nice that he has a scene from Chaplin’s The Adventurer where Chaplin escapes from custody (in the sand!), mirroring the woman who escapes from jail in the film.
Notice, too, how Peixote highlights the wedding ring on the finger of the man at the top of the stairs when the woman (his wife?) walks in. Such little details add up to show how carefully Peixote constructed his film. Why this young 22 year old film buff never made another film is a real mystery. But, thanks to some critics who worked to preserve it, and now Salles, this work is available for all to see.
Apparently, Orson Welles and the star of Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, Renee Falconetti, had a private screening of this in South America. It looks like the sort of visually innovative film that would appeal to Welles. Now, we can appreciate it, too.
Brazil (Limite) – (0) vs. South Africa (Felix in Exile) – (1)
Brazil (Limite) – (0) vs. South Africa (Felix in Exile) – (1)
u can only vote once coheed :P
I’m halfway through Limite and not doing too well. Pretty bored. Going going to have to take a break and try again tomorrow.
I’m halfway through Limite and not doing too well. Pretty bored. Going going to have to take a break and try again tomorrow.
People refuse to learn from their mistakes…including myself.
Brazil (Limite) 0 — South Africa (Felix in Exile) 1
Mário Peixoto indeed used many quixotic and bizarre camera p.o.v. set-ups, also his dolly shots, what looked like hand held shots, boat shots, macro shots, camera shutter/streaking shots—all were impressive and imaginative, however, in time, I began to miss transitions of any kind. Also contrary to some, I absolutely loathed the music, largely Erik Satie who wasn’t meant to be looped for 2 hours. Also, perhaps I didn’t see the same film as others, but the restoration was so-so at best. I’ll assume it was nitrate, and some of it was destroyed, but there are digital fixes for many things today, and this barely looked restored at all. I wasn’t sure why we had such a fascination with men’s shoes and hair, but I was beginning to believe it was a large story point.
Yeah, that’s it—The story was actually about a land where all the barbers and cobblers had been drowned at see by a large storm. The weight of men’s hair caused their necks to lose strength and they all sat down all the time and put their heavy hair on their arms falling asleep. Perhaps it turned into narcolepsy after awhile, either at sea or on someone’s stairs, pianos, bar tables— men couldn’t stay awake. In this land everyone was married to everyone else, and were forced to wear gold rings. All the women had leprosy, causing women’s hair to grow wild and hurt them deeply. It’s why the land was called Sadness, and the sea was called Hopelessness. All the male husbands were also gay, and played an age old game called hair wars, in which two unhappily married gay guys met at a cemetery and bet their wedding rings on which of them had the best part in their hair. If you lost, you had to chase after the other fellow and yell as loud as you could, so that the bushes carried your plaintive cry leaf by leaf (though extremely quickly) to the ears of the fellow up ahead, who had the power to disappear—a boon he received from winning the straightest hair competition. On the land of Sadness women were tortured by having to walk in wet sand with their heels on. And then, when they went to sea in rather slow boats (as is the custom for ennui-soaked females) they were tortured by having their clothes decompose before their very eyes, at first merely runs in stockings, but eventually huge gaping holes in their dresses began to show, causing sunburn and eventually giving them no other options but to use their feminine wiles, ( semi-dressed as Sad women often are) to call on Neptune to bring a storm onto the rocks. Only the rocks mind you. On the Hopeless sea it’s called minimalist shore storm. Which if you say it fast over and over makes you pregnant. And though the storms are rather small and short, it smashes apart all the boats on the Hopeless sea drowning those with the worst hair. The story had lots of other ingredients to maintain its unity. For example, to take their minds off of the hair pain, some of the unhappy gay husbands (of everyone) planted cameras in their chests focused on their fingers and played piano at the silent film theater. At such times, the films shown were hilarious comedies, but it only made the husbands more suicidal. Sometimes their hair hurt so much they wore hats in every other reaction shot—the weird continuity patterns were actually Macumba spells to ward off crooked hair parts, leprosy, narcolepsy and sea-sickness of the Hopeless variety.
Though I may not have understood every detail, the film was certainly not difficult to follow, especially if you’d seen the same Eisenstein films that Peixote had seen in Brazil and Europe. They were a sexless lot the lads and lassies of Sadness’ municipalities and beaches, rarely looking each other in the eye let alone a kiss, but perhaps kissing and lips weren’t of much value. Wearing stuffy suits and dresses in the hot sun made all the usual sex glands of no consequence. It was all in the feet. Yup, a fetish land in which the church forced the faithful to wear leather shoes, even in sand or in their dreamy flashbacks. Women especially were forced to hide their delectable arches and toes in bunion causing pumps, especially when nearly lobotomized in boats waiting for the end of the world. One can only empathize and hope that Davy Jones locker will eventually rot away the outer layers of shoe leather, as sadness on the sea rotted away the women’s clothing. Finally, due to rot, their toes will get to wiggle, do the shimmy, get nasty and cause lots of bubbles to swim to the surface with a poof of hope to anyone else confined in stiff shoes, gold rings, bad hair, leaky boats and no story. Perhaps not a masterpiece, but art to be sure.
I voted for the animation because I couldn’t make sense of it either, but it was shorter (and I happen to think William Kentridge’s animation and films are amazing unions of drawing, story and psychological investigations, often looking into the political and social ills of his birthplace).
All the women had leprosy, causing women’s hair to grow wild and hurt them deeply ♥♥♥
that reminds me – that one precious hair-singing grin! – when mr mop-head (channelling a wan barge-less charles farrell, although alas not naked) was recounting his leprosy tale, and the girls leaned away. not so much hilarious as opening up an angle to quietly redeem all the surrounding misery…
as for felix in exile….argh how delicious! {head explodes} to map the traces of a political and pained past with a style of animation that leaves visible traces! and to have his alter-ego as a surveyor…psychogeographer! neat.
this is such a great match.
I don’t know why people feel like justifying what they are voting against more than what they are voting for. That too writing a load of gibberish that makes you puke.
aww, i enjoy the gibberish xD
Ruby Stevens – My apologies. I realised when I pressed the post reply button I inadvertently caused my vote to repeat twice. If anyone in the technical department of the site can remove one of them for me I’ll appreciate it.
N/A
jus teasin, coheed ;)
re: “I don’t know why people feel like justifying what they are voting against more than what they are voting for. That too writing a load of gibberish that makes you puke.”
If it’s me who made you puke, Rohit, I’m so sorry. Different people just do things differently. Next time, ignore it. If you see my name and lots of text, skip over it and save your stomach. As for your appreciation of Guru Dutt, on another thread, I agree wholeheartedly with you. As for _Limite_we disagree.
If it really bothers you send a message.
Nobody should post comments anywhere on this site, except Rohit. Comments make Rohit very, very angry. Except for his own.
Risselada
This topic is part of the 2012 MUBI World Cup. If you have not already done so, please read the first post at the topic for an introduction to and rules about this year’s World Cup:
http://mubi.com/topics/2012-mubi-world-cup-introduction-submit-your-list-of-films
Brazil
Original title: Limite
Directed by: Mário Peixoto
Approximate runtime: 120 min
Submitted by: herbie s
South Africa
Original title: Felix in Exile
Directed by: William Kentridge
Approximate runtime: 9 min
Submitted by: Jorge Didaco
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The purpose of this topic is to cast votes in the matchup listed above and also to be a forum for discussing the films in the match.
Anyone who has seen both of the films listed above may vote in this match. You must vote for whichever of the two films you personally like better. In order to vote you must post a reply to this topic containing one of the following sequences:
If you are voting for Limite: “Brazil (Limite) 1 – South Africa (Felix in Exile) 0”
If you are voting for Felix in Exile: “Brazil (Limite) 0 – South Africa (Felix in Exile) 1”
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