Director Erico Rassi has become one of the most fascinating voices of the newest Brazilian cinema. He combines the classical codes of the Western genre and gives them another significance. In his debut feature, the 2016 Comeback, he narrates the story of a man who lost the magnificence of his violent potential. The director achieves his goal by using the iconic Brazilian actor Nelson Xavier to represent the passage of time in the human body. His sophomore act, Oeste Outra Vez or Same Old West, won the Golden Kikito, the major award in the Gramado Film Fest, Brazil’s most important festival. Rassi returns to the West and its genre formulas with this film. He narrates the clash of two washed-up men. Toto (Ângelo Antônio) and Durval (Babu Santana), machos in the countryside of Goiás, Brazil, dispute the same woman’s love. Their inability to solve their differences leads to irrational actions and exodus to protect their lives.
Rassi develops his neo-western through a narrative that uses visual symbolism and humorous dialogue to emphasize the idiosyncrasy of the situation. From the first scene, an opening shot of a car crash resulting in a bodily duel, the director uses the opening framing of the landscapes to situate the characters. Their first interaction is through violence, an efficacious choice that properly presents the background of those individuals. It is also the only time we see the woman in dispute, observing her back while she walks away from the violence. In these first five minutes, the dramatic elements are established. The following scenes draw a portrayal of the city, an inner neighborhood where bars are the principal communal space, and men gather to drink their feelings and enjoy life with their companions. It becomes a crucial setting for the film. Toto is a bar owner – like him, the place is washed-up and cluttered. Rassi composes the lead’s emotional blockage; his inappetence mirrors that place. It is empty and old-fashioned. It even has a pile of useless items in the ladies’ restroom, equaling his personal, where only a lady has the spot.
In this sense, the film benefits from an assertive framing that Rassi employs in each scene. The elements of traditional Westerns conduct the tension and drama, which is under-layered in tragicomedy. The comical tone of the lines hides the melancholy in each of those men. They are incapable of accepting the loss of a woman and decide to resort to the human instinct: violence. The nuances are only possible due to a casting that highlights its material. Ângelo Antônio gives life to a man unsure why he is acting that way but needs to react to the counter-attacks. His back is arched, and his confidence is only present playing pool. His relationship with Jerominho (Rodger Rogério), the gunman he hires to murder Durval, is crucial to his path. The chemistry between both actors allows the viewer to connect with the harsh reality of that place. They are men who feel useless and abandoned, leaning towards violence to respond to the world around them.
Another engaging aspect of the film is how Rassi uses some traditional signs of the local culture to engage dramaturgically. For example, the classical country song Boate Azul (Blue Nightclub), the soundtrack of multiple people’s drinking adventures, plays during the duo’s escape. The saloons become paintless bars with cheap booze. The precise gunmen turn into aimless old folks. The director merges the culture with the symbolic elements of the North American cowboy: riding horses in dry landscapes. However, the figures are men are incompetent to murder someone and need to escape with those horses to somewhere else. He does not flip the genre conventions for revisionism purposes, but he does it to insert the deterioration of those people into the canon. The final confrontation of the men escaping with those hired to murder them is a classical incarnation of the genre. They battle in a cabin in the woods, where everyone’s lives are at risk. But Rassi does not rush his climax; he slowly develops it to reach a richer impact, using the limited space to boost the action occurring there. Just as in its introduction, the final gunfight leaves an impression of a highly controlled direction that impresses for its visual precision.
In his sophomore dance Same Old West, Rassi continues exploring the thematic axis of his debut: the deterioration of men as they get older and how the instinct of violence requires more effort. The noteworthy work of the director elevates the film through fascinating framing and creative choices. He merges the local with the genre traditions to study the confrontation of two men unable to deal with their emotions and situations.
Same Old West is currently playing in Brazilian theaters.
Learn more about the film at the official site for the title.
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