Gebo and his Shadow

 I would like to apply a different standard to Gebo and his Shadow,  a 2012 film by Manoel de Oliveira, than to other movies.  Oliveira was 104 years old when the film was released and, certainly,  the picture's chief interest likes in this somewhat freakish fact.  And, so, I would like to tell you that Oliveira's Gebo is a spritely and engaging -- a film, in other words, that evinces an exuberant youthful spirit.  It would be fun to write that Gebo is youthful and could be a picture by a director aged 80 or, even, 75.  But this would be dishonest.  Although the film is certainly excellent in some respects, it is also tedious and simply peculiar in ways that are somewhat repellant.  Clearly, a strong cinematic imagination is at work in the picture, indeed, precisely in the ways that it is non-cinematic.  But the film's fundamental flaw, it's archaic and bad script, can't be wished away.  Oliveira is adapting a play by Raul Brandao, seemingly performed in French against minimalist sets.  Simply put, the play isn't very good.  Oliveira gets fine performances from an all-star, if superannuated cast. (The movie features performances by Jeanne Moreau and Claudia Cardinale.)  The movie's images, although static, are fantastically beautiful.  But the plot, such as it is, doesn't support the brilliance in the performances and production.

Gebo begins where Chekhov's Uncle Vanya ends:  defeated by life, a man and woman talk about existing without joy or, even, happiness -- their adventures have ended in disaster and there is nothing left for them but to patiently await death.  During this dispirited dialogue, the old man does figures in an account book, adding up numbers for an employer who despises him.  The situation seems to be that the old bookkeeper, Gebo and his wife, have married their son, Joao, to an orphaned girl that they have raised, Sofia.  Eight years earlier, Joao vanished in suspicious circumstances.  Gebo's wife is half-crazed over the absence of her son.  (She seems to have no sympathy with her daughter-in-law, Sofia)  Gebo has been lying to his wife, claiming that Joao periodically writes, although not to his parents or wife, but to some one else.  The (fictional) third-party, then, allows Gebo to read the (fictional) letters that Joao has dispatched.  Gebo loyally reports the content of these imaginary letters to Dorotiea, his wife. Gebo is exhausted by the effort of maintaining this sham -- he says that it's like "writing a serial" every night.  However, Gebo has seen Joao lurking around -- or, at least, he thinks he has seen his son.  Indeed, in the beginning of the movie we have seen a man that we construe as Joao standing at the harbor and, then, perhaps, encountering Gebo in the shadows. (In fact, the encounter is between Joao and a man that he mugs -- we learn this about half-way through the picture.)  Gebo laments the situation with his daughter-in-law, Sofia, in very melodramatic language -- the film is full of extreme hyperbole.  Dorotiea has come to dislike intensely not only her husband but Sofia for  whom she blames Joao's disappearance:  "the less you love him, the more I do for the two of you," she says.

The film's second act (the play has four acts, the film simplifies this into a three act plot) involves a visit to Gebo's mausoleum-like house by two friends, both of them elderly, a thespian (Comicha) and a woman (Candidha -- played by Jeanne Moreau).  There's some banter that is reasonably light-hearted about Comicha seducing women in his youth by playing the flute.  His recent play has failed due to lack of candle-power; the show was insufficiently lit, apparently, part of the film's theme involving shadow and light. Joao who showed up at the end of Act One, now invades this companionable gathering and insults everyone as servile lickspittles.  He admits to a crime, something like a mugging, and argues that everyone has the capacity to commit crimes if forced by necessity.  Gebo, who seems lacking in any sort of common sense, puts a briefcase full of money in a cabinet that he locks, clearly displaying a small fortune in cash that he has collected on behalf of his employer.  Of course, this turns out to be catastrophic stupidity.  Joao steals the money and darts out into the perpetual rainfall that afflicts this harbor town.  In a puzzling scene, Sofia goes out into the street and looks up at a statue of the Virgin Mary.  (Why? Apparently for solace -- Oliveira has confessed to being a believing Catholic and, indeed, has been praised by the current Pope for his piety).

The film's last act is unbearably maudlin.  Gebo has concluded that he can't tell his longsuffering wife that Joao snatched the cash.  This seems pretty much idiotic since the mother seems to know that Joao is, at the very best, totally worthless.  Gebo and Sofia literally whimper to one another, the old man, in particular, exclaiming his misery in an irritating high-pitched sobbing voice.  In the background, we can hear Dorotiea simpering in her bedroom.  The authorities predictably show up armed with rifles.  They hurl open the door to the crypt where the action takes place and a bright honey-colored light floods the little room so that the soldiers now cast shadows on Gebo.  Gebo announces that he is the thief while his wife and Sofia gape in  horror.  Everything freezes and this is the end of the movie. 

Brandao's 1923 play O Gebo y a Sombra is like subpar Ibsen,  The characters are all tormented in various ways and they give voice to their misery at great length.  There aren't any surprises in the play and the miserable figures trapped in this scenario just repeat their poetic laments in more and more histrionic language until the climax occurs -- Gebo's sacrifice, which doesn't really seem like much of anything, since he's already about as miserable as a man can be.  (Someone needs to put him out of his misery).  Brandao, born in 1867, came from a family of Portuguese sailors; hence, the play's nautical imagery.  He died in 1930 and the play seems a bit like a museum-piece -- although, in fairness, it should be noted that Brandao is sufficiently important in his native Portugal to appear on the country's currency. 

To say that this film is handsome is an understatement.  Some of the shots in the movie are among the most beautiful that I have ever seen.  The opening image of Joao posed against a grim-looking iron ship at the harbor is breathtaking -- it's a symphony of greys with the waters in the harbor shimmering only very slightly in a sort of metallic light.  The film eschews close-ups and is shot in the style of a silent movie produced before the era of Griffith -- the picture proceeds as a series of tableaux, mostly filmed frontally as if to simulate a theatrical production.  There is no shot/reverse shot editing.  The scenes play out as if on stage.  However, the shots are brilliantly lit with Magritte-style lighting englobing parts of the set with amber-colored illumination, bare grey walls burnished as if made from ancient bronze or zinc.  Each shot is very precisely lit and staged, although action consists of people sometimes standing up to declaim their lines before sitting back down.  A window looks out onto a grey, rainy street and, sometimes, the light in the house is reflected from the glass panes of the window, creating complex mirror-like effects.   But, apart from its beauty, the film is sedentary and very dull.  I can't see any reason that Oliveira revived this antique play and, although his conception of the work is interesting, it's not worth the tedium.  I suspect, but don't know, that Oliveira has radically simplified the play.  We have no idea why Joao has been wandering around for eight years, apparently having abandoned his beautiful wife and family -- has he been in jail or at sea or both?  The situation is left very unclear and I suspect that lots of expository dialogue has been cut -- the result is to make the old play a bit enigmatic and mysterious:  Oliveira has said that he thinks the play is a precursor to Beckett.  Maybe so, but it's not worth restaging.