There is a delightful scene, early in the film Horse Money, during which the characters Ventura and Vitalina (also the names of the actors) discuss the fate and current status of Vitalina’s husband, Joaquim. She has been told by numerous authorities that her husband is dead. Ventura says no; he has seen Joaquim. The conversation takes place without eye contact in a nondescript space resembling a hospital room, where light is limited just enough to flatter the black skin of these two people. As she speaks, Vitalina arranges strings of black beads on a Formica tabletop. The beads click upon contact, and then swish as she slides them to form various shapes—from spread wings to cruciforms—searching for meaning. Those sounds would be hypnotic enough. Added to them is Vitalina’s musical voice, reciting in voice-over the pro forma government correspondence informing her of Joaquim’s demise.
Vitalina ponders the beads, nods at their message, and then quietly shuffles them, hoping for something better. Rather than creating scenes that move a script from one plot point to another, Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa brings together actors (often amateurs or non-actors), realistic scenery that is usually jarring and rarely a comfort to the eye, and captivating photography that makes use of subtle and unnatural angles to prevent any sense of complete familiarity. He makes scenes that he can arrange and rearrange like Vitalina’s beads. The order of these scenes is not crucial to their meaning. And if you insist upon deciphering a timeline, you will find that it moves in multiple directions.
Over the course of Horse Money, Ventura shuffles barefoot among the alleys of the Lisbon immigrant slum Fontainhas—a favorite setting for Costa, and where you met Ventura if you’ve seen Colossal Youth (2006)—and a dehumanizing array of haunted institutional spaces. (A favorite chirp among sensitive folks is a distaste for fluorescent lighting. It seems far more troubling to be trapped in these chambers lined with fluorescent fixtures that are turned off.) There is precious little light in front of the camera. What little exists is almost hidden, like stolen property. Low light on dark-skinned people, shot against mostly dark scenery, eliminates many of the lines we use to distinguish and separate people from place. More than once we see Ventura walk out of himself, announcing himself in advance with his bare feet treading rough surfaces.
Ventura is interviewed by bureaucrats who have the most vague trappings of the medical professional, though they clearly have no interest in his well being. Also present intermittently are apparitions of characters who might have peopled Ventura’s past. Their abstract reminiscences sometimes reveal deep connections, and sometimes reveal a void where Ventura had imagined a connection.
There are precedents for film as a venue for self-conversation and self-examination. Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest and A Man Escaped are examples, and masterpieces of the form. Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki employs a charming conceit in many of his films, where characters simply speak to themselves aloud and those nearby make use of the information, whether romantically or criminally. When Vitalina first encounters Ventura, she asks him, “What do you do here?” “I speak to the walls,” he says.
Most who have seen Bresson, and many who have not, would recognize self-dialogue as some cousin of confession.
Costa presents something like hope in a neutral context, neither encouraging nor discouraging. Ventura’s restlessness suggests that he is hopeful of accomplishing something: perhaps reconciling some past, to which several are referred, perhaps exiting this fever-dream slumber. As dim as the light in this purgatory is, it must have a source. Less than a year old, Public Cinema strides boldly into its second season of adventurous and laudable programming. Learned organizers Paul Harrill and Darren Hughes are grappling with the reality of what Knoxville audiences want to see and what they want Knoxville audiences to see.
The opportunity to view this film is something uncommon. This film itself is something uncommon. Spread those things before you like black beads on a white surface. What you see there may provide useful information.
Horse Money, part of the Public Cinema series, screens at the Knoxville Museum of Art (1050 World’s Fair Park Drive) on Sunday, Oct. 25, at 2 p.m. Admission is free.
Chris Barrett's Shelf Life alerts readers to new arrivals at the Lawson McGhee Library's stellar Sights and Sounds collection, along with recommendations and reminders of staples worthy of revisiting. He is a former Metro Pulse staff writer who’s now a senior assistant at the Knox County Public Library.
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