Kenoma (1998) Online

KENOMA is one of the films that is fueling the rebirth of Brazilian cinema. The other user comment states that better than I can. But, KENOMA is one of over 40 top of the line full feature films made in Brazil last year, and one of the best. Walter Salles(CENTRAL STATION) was relatively unknown though his previous film was a European co-production starring Fernanda Torres (Montenegro's daughter) but not released in North America and Europe. Then, virtually overnight, he (and his former leading lady's mother) became synonymous with Brazilian cinema with CENTRAL STATION's hype. A similar fate is equally deserved by KENOMA. Since 1996, a Brazilian film has competed for the foreign language film Oscar every year. KENOMA could be the next one (though it faces stiff competition from what we are seeing coming out of Brazil now). This film tells a simple, timeless story: the dream of building a machine of endless motion, that continues generating movement pertually. This quixotic story takes place in the small town of KENOMA, and the chaos caused by our hero's pursuit of his "impossible dream" defines the film's plot.

Mrs. Caffe made it! The brazilian films history, as the director Nelson Pereira dos Santos says, is made of deaths and re-births. Since 1990 the ashes of Tupi Phoenix has becoming a new bird. The multiplicity of styles is the main characteristic of the recent brazilian filmography, and Kenoma is a perfect example. A portrait of a place in the country, lost in the middle of nowhere, where people is a part of the landscape. The strong aspects of the characters personality (like obstinacy and desire for progress) contrasts on the bucolic comunity, poor and forgotten. Great movie, with great actors playing fantastic roles - each character fighting to reach his own aim.

This is a film with an awful photography, too blue at night and too bright at sunlight. That puts me off, no matter the story. But the story also puts me off. Lineo, an imaginative Brazilian, tries to construct a "perpetuel" machine. He fights for his dream that is exactly that, a dream. He is not a scientist trying to get over some barriers. He is a dreamer, out of nowhere, with a dream. Thanks to some good sense he doesn't realize his dream! The story is constructed to make him a (false) hero but , if this was not the intention, that is far from clear. Brazil has a lot more to tell us that this junk of unfulfilled dreams.