When I think of post-modern film narratives wherein the lead character serves as both protagonist and self-referential narrator, I usually picture the work of directors like Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen. I am well aware that such storytelling devices predate the cinema, but those are the film-makers that I associate them with. However, after watching André Klotzel’s Posthumous Memories, I feel that I might need to revise those preconceptions. Based on Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis’ groundbreaking novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, the film follows a recently deceased aristocrat named Brás Cubas as he recounts his life and many lost loves. Both the novel and the film prominently feature a sardonic disregard for conventional narrative techniques: Brás Cubas interrupts his narrative several times to go on tangents, directly interacts with his past self, and provides grating commentary on both his own life and 19th century Brazil. As he is quick to point out, he did nothing to improve or worsen the state of the world with his life. But this leads to one of the film’s main problem: Brás Cubas is not a very interesting person in and of himself. As such, the film relies heavily on the narrator breaking the fourth wall to engage the audience. But the film does this less and less as trudges on. Near the end it frequently feels like a standard, Merchant Ivory production. Still, most of the film is wildly inventive and stands as a fitting adaption of one of Brazil’s most important literary masterpieces.
7/10
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