blown away
by
Douglas Messerli
Carlos
Hugo Christensen, Millor Fernandes, and Anibal Machado (writers), Carlos Hugo
Christensen (director) O menino e o vento (The Boy and the Wind)
/ 1967
Born
and raised in Argentina, Carlos Hugo Christensen made 54 films before his death
in Rio de Janeiro in 1996, moving from Argentina to Brazil in the 1950s to
found his own studio, Carlos Hugo Christensen Produções Cinematográficas.
In Brazil he produced a wide variety of
films among the most memorable of which was he 1967 work, O menino e o vento
(The Boy and the Wind).
Superficially, this is not a gay film,
although its hero—a handsome young engineer, José Nery, who as the film begins
returns to the small rural Brazilian village which he had earlier visited on
vacation—has agreed to stand trial for the mysterious murder of a local teenage
boy he had met there, Zeca da Curva. Although he is not charged with pedophilia
(the age of consent in Brazil was at the time of the trial and remains today
the age of 14, while Zeca is 15 years of age), the villagers are also certain
that he has regularly had sex with the boy, since he was often seen standing on
a hill with both of them naked and he had regularly paid the teenager for
services unknown.
If we are to believe the narration of the
film itself, however, there is no evidence that the two fulfilled any sexual
desires, and the shirt of the boy later found, part of the villager’s proof of
the boy’s murder, was tied to a post by the boy himself.
Clearly José is certain of his innocence,
refusing even the help of the local sleazy lawyer who promises to get him off
with lesser charges, and rejecting to even directly question those many who
accuse him of the murder, including the boy’s mother, his rich cousin Marío
(who lives in Rio de Janeiro, and threatens to testify against the engineer
because, as he tells him, he too is homosexual and can therefore recognize José’s
behavior as being somewhat similar to his own), the concierge of the small
hotel where José stays on both his visits (a woman who has offered herself to
the visitor and has become enraged by his rejection) and others, who all
believe that the “murder of passion” stemmed from the horrific fact that José was
a pederast. If nothing else, the stranger played a pedagogical role to Zeca,
offering the boy knowledge beyond his previous experiences.
The concierge, moreover, confirms the
reason for José’s sudden decision to leave the village was that he was asked to
return home by his fiancée. Yet, the townspeople see, even in that, evidence
that he murdered the youth when reminded of his more normative sexual responsibilities,
killing the boy, perhaps, out of feeling pangs of guilt.
The
villagers are angered over the intrusion of their isolated world for other
reasons as well. Since José departed the heavy winds for which the town was
noted have subsided, leaving hot air to drive them out of their homes into the
streets. Some believe that the construction of a new river dam—a structure with
which the engineer had no direct involvement—is the cause of their woes. If José
has left a world of friendly rustics, he has returned to a dark and threatening
place where he is perceived as the symbol of several losses in their meager existences.
Accordingly, the film-goer watching the
first part of Christensen’s film is faced with either believing the truths with
which the townspeople are familiar or with the possibility that the director
himself is not being entirely open.
Gradually, we discover that not only are
the villagers unable to see the real truths behind their surface appearances
but that Christensen himself is composing a work that tells its tale through a
lens that is less about 20th century notions of reality than a Romantic
metaphor of something perhaps even more horrific to this simple bourgeois
community than their own fears of homosexuality and murder.
When it comes time for José to present his
version of the “real,” the story he tells is as unrecognizable as if he were
speaking in an unknown tongue of a previously unknown Amazon tribe.
The engineer has traveled to this
particular village, he recounts, because of its famous winds, some of the
fiercest in the entire country. Even since he was a young child, he admits, he
has been fascinated with and obsessed with strong winds. His own family was
artistic and encouraged his deviant interests, which is why, when seeking an
occupation, he explains, he chose one entirely based upon logic and
mathematical certainty. It is as if he would attempt to cure his dangerously
inexplicable pleasures with something in which he could trust, a knowable
entity that could better society rather than standing as a force outside of it.
He was a good engineer and quickly worked
his way upon in his office, taking on so many new projects that he nearly
collapsed with exhaustion over his intense commitment to their design and
execution. When he was told he must take a vacation before continuing his work,
he chose something that might take him out of his zone of comfort and return
him to his childhood delights.
If at first, the boy’s enthusiasm seems
something acted out simply to gain favor with the outsider, José quickly discovers
that the younger version of himself is truly at one with the wind, able to even
speak its own language and, on occasion, call it forth.
Time and again, the two trek up to hills
overlooking the village to be whipped by the force of the strong gales, enjoying
them most as they sweep across their naked bodies, sometimes so powerful that
they must cling to one another simply to stay in place.
José explains to Zeca that there are even
stronger winds by the ocean, a place to where the adolescent has never before
traveled, and at one point when the boy disappears for a couple of days—the
elder mistakenly believing that Zeca is hiding out with his girlfriend, which
somewhat irritates him—the boy returns to report that he has run away to the ocean
to enjoy the lusty winds he has encountered there.
Zeca has promised him, however, that there
will soon be even a stronger wind upon the hill, and before the boy has
returned he attempts to travel alone by horse to the top of the summit, there
encountering winds that make him fear for his life, only to have Zeca return at
that very moment, shedding his clothes as they cling together for protection,
one of the scenes recounted at the later trial.
Even the director’s visual enactment of
that scene suggests that the deep friendship between these two involves
something other than an appreciation of forceful air currents. If we haven’t
already perceived it, we now must recognize that their beloved winds not only
tear away their clothes, but all other inhibitions. In a sense, they become one
with nature, and as such, become free of all societal constraints, including
any sexual restrictions. They have, in fact, in their embracement of the
natural, transcended their human limitations, becoming one with the other as
surely as if they had inserted themselves into each other’s body.
One might also perceive this metaphor as
representing the adult not only reentering his childhood existence but as the
child being consumed into the body he must later inhabit. In the end, we might
not only see the wind as freeing them up to enjoy something much like a sexual
encounter, but, again metaphorically speaking, reclamation and sublimation (a
kind of symbolic murder) by the elder of his own younger being. The boy cannot
later be found because he has become José, who himself has been
transformed into the breath of another truth that threatens to destroy all
normative societal values.
Near the end of the trial where we can only
imagine that the accused will be found guilty, the wind suddenly enters the
village once more, letting loose a fury that threatens to tear away every human
construct, the trial room attendees running for cover in fear for their own
lives.
Only José calmly stands in place,
seemingly impervious from the destructive storm he himself has called up. We
cannot know whether it is the elder or the soul of the lost boy returning to existence.
But it clearly no longer matters: they are one and the same having sexually
consummated in way in which no ordinary mortal can explain.
A serviceable if not entirely accurate
English language subtitled version of this eccentric Portuguese-language film
is available on YouTube.
Los
Angeles, August 29, 2020
Reprinted
from World Cinema Review (August 2020).
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