O Pagador de Promessas
Religious
movies, or movies with strong religious themes, are often problematic for me to
watch. Not because I dislike them, though I sometimes do, but because I feel
they are talking past me. Like watching a movie referencing a culture I am not
familiar with. Oh, I know about religion of course, but there are numerous
concepts that only a true believer or one deeply embedded in the culture will
truly understand.
And so a
movie like “O Pagador de Promessas” or “Keeper of Promises” is aimed at
somebody else than me and I am a bit sidelined with only a partial
understanding of what is going on.
A man, Ze
(Leonardo Villar) arrives in Salvador, Brazil, with a huge cross on his
shoulder and his wife in tow. It is the middle of the night and the church,
which is their destination is not yet open. Ze and his wife, Rosa (Gloria
Menezes) have walked all the way from their village to keep a promise to Santa
Barbara. When Ze’s donkey fell ill only prayer to Santa Barbara worked and to
give thanks Ze has promised to bring this huge cross to Santa Barbara’s church
in Salvador.
Fairly
simple, right? Or so you should think.
It turns
out to be way more complicated. When the priest (Dionisio Azevedo) arrives, he
will have none of it. The primary reason being that Ze actually made the
promise to someone called Inanza, or something like that, in a witchcraft
ceremony. In that particular sect Inanza is an incarnation of Santa Barbara and
the witchcraft and catholic church are there meshed together. Not so in
Salvador and the priest will not allow any connection to witchcraft in the
church. Ze however is stubborn. He made a promise and he intends to keep it so
he stays. This is where the situation turns crazy.
A pimp
manages to seduce Rosa and turns the police onto Ze to get him out of the
picture. A journalist sees a story in the making and makes a big thing out of
it. Locals see Ze as a rebel against establishment and rally around him and
desperate people converge on him, seeing him as a saint with holy powers. And
that is just the tip of the iceberg. Ze is constantly being used, abused,
misunderstood and ridiculed and he just wants to keep his promise.
This all
sounds very familiar. I am sure I have seen very similar movies before. “Ace in
the Hole” comes to mind, but also “Life of Brian”. Obviously the movie is
aiming at the exploitation of the naïve and of real faith versus institutionalized
faith, but for me it actually seems to be about the absurdity of religion.
Everything spins so horribly out of control because people get carried away by
their convictions. This is why I write that I do not feel properly dressed for
watching this movie. I do not understand what drives these people. A little
flexibility all round would go a long way to defuse this situation, but instead
the characters come out as caricatures, extreme and one-dimensional characters who
serve the purpose to prove a point.
Because of
this artificial sense I cannot say that I truly like the movie, but I suspect
it is more a matter of me not understanding it well enough. It was nominated
for an Academy award and won the Palme d’Or in Cannes so somebody obviously got
more out of it than I did. What I did get is what I usually appreciate in
movies from “exotic” (read: different from the usual) places, the window it
provides into a very different world. Brazil is to me a very exotic place. I
have been there twice and what strikes me is how extremely diverse a place it
is. From north to south, from rich to poor, countryside to the city. This is
something you also see in this movie and maybe it is actually the fundamental
theme of the movie.