Ovid.tv Presents ARABY Review – No Escape from Dreary

The opening scenes of a young man freely coasting on his bicycle with a captivating green mountain vista behind him belies the more than hour and a half slow moving gloom that follows.

Going up and down hills with an American song track in the background, he eventually arrives at home. It is poorly lit, no frills, and in the shadow of the aluminum processing plant of Ouro Preto, in the mining industry region of Minas Gerais, Brazil. His doe-faced younger brother has a cough, is out of medicine, and seems quite young to have M.I.A. parents. This younger brother tells us what we really need to know about the landscape, remarking that given all the death and gloom in life, it is much easier to believe in the devil than in God.

From prison, to unpaid farm work, to one backbreaking laborer job to the next, we follow Cristiano’s life, or rather existence. Other than the collegiality and shared song here or there with fellow worker, there isn’t much room for anything other than work-til-you-drop day-after-day. It’s not a life that allows much space for joy or for love, as we and he come to learn. Cristiano’s life moves slowly, as does the story. When we hear Lula’s name mentioned it comes as no surprise that these characters are his constituents. For this writer, the slow moving trek from one moment of drear to the next could also be an infomercial for Lula’s workers’ rights driven political campaign. The power of ARABY is multiplied many times over by the camera’s close ups of the many actors who seem to be the people of their characters—especially mesmerizing lead Aristides de Sousa.