A small journey by an unassuming Latino into an unfriendly world that nonetheless brings wisdom.
Araby
Grade: B+
Director: Joao Dumans, Affonso Uchoa (The Hidden Tiger)
Screenplay: Dumans (Where I Grow Old), Uchoa
Cast: Aristides de Sousa, Murilo Caliari
Rating: NR
Runtime: 1 hr 37 min
by John DeSando
“I’m like everyone else. It’s just my life that was a little bit different.” Cristiano (Aristides de Sousa)
As a road ramble and self-discovery story, Araby, set in Brazil, is more unassuming than most others. In fact it is nothing like the robust Motorcycle Diaries or Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001); it rather is a simple tale from a factory worker Cristiano’s (Aristides de Sousa) notebook that tells of small adventures and small defeats, all in the name of trying to find himself in the daily grind of working for the man.
Truth be told, his story is “a little bit different” but not by much. Araby has a lyric beauty in its simplicity, a reverence for the small things of life like riding a bicycle or briefly falling in love, with dreams of having a child, a seeming impossibility in such poverty. This almost randomly episodic tale, told in voice-over by Cristiano as young Andre (Murilo Caliari) reads Cristiano’s notes, holds secrets about a young man’s dreams and not so subtle opinions about the dead end of factory work.
In fact, the meta theme of owners exploiting workers has more prominence than it seems because of its low key appearance in a few words and images of Cristiano toiling amidst the hellish flames of the steel factory, where a good black worker can be fired or a competent Latino can become dispirited just by the work.
As Cristiano says, this is” the story of how I stood up for myself.” That insight is worth watching in a road picture like few others.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
