Mariana Cunha

Ventos de agosto (August Winds, Dir.: Gabriel Mascaro, 2014) and Viajo porque preciso, volto porque te amo (I Travel Because I Have to, I Come Back because I Love You, Dir. Karim Aïnouz and Marcelo Gomes, 2009) are two feature-length films that depict the complex imbrications of archaic and modern aspects of contemporary Northeast Brazil through a cinematographic language that blurs the limits of fiction and documentary to narrate their characters’ stories of isolation. In both films, natural spaces play a crucial role. While Mascaro’s Ventos de agosto is set in a cut-off fishing village which is slowly being washed away by the ocean tide, Aïnouz and Gomes’ Viajo porque preciso is constructed by a series of interwoven archive footage of deserted backlands [sertão], captured some ten years before the release of the film. Likewise, the narrative of both films is anchored on the character of a scientist (a meteorologist and a geologist, respectively), whose presence, either through their image (body) or sound (voice), offers a material character to the portrayal of natural spaces and landscapes. The aim of this chapter is to analyze the extent to which the inscription of the body and the “scientific” look at the spaces and landscapes in these two films – each one with its innovative narrative and aesthetic quality – reveal a renewed approach to cinematic spatiality in contemporary Brazilian cinema. Moreover, through the analysis of the narrative and aesthetic choices, it looks at the relationship between authorship, materiality and subjectivity. Finally, the use of iconic images of the desert and the sea, which are dear to Brazilian cinema tradition, is transformed by the way the spaces lose their sublime character with the inscription of the body as sensory, material and affective power in the films. I contend that Ventos de agosto and Viajo porque preciso are fine examples of a new trend in contemporary Brazilian cinema that resort to a depiction of the materiality of spaces and bodies, and thus provide an almost corporeal cinematic experience and a new poetics to this iconic spaces.

Este artigo examina a relação entre as narrativas de causalidade mínima e a construção dos espaços e enquadramentos de corpos e paisagens nos dois primeiros longas-metragens de Lynne Ramsay, Ratcatcher (1999) e Morvern Callar (2002). Busca-se analisar como os filmes põem em cena os efeitos do trauma a partir de uma estética que privilegia o uso não convencional da escala e do movimento. Desse modo, a análise sugere que as escolhas estéticas de Ramsay, ao retratar narrativas minimalistas, criam paisagens afetivas a partir da experiência sensorial e corpórea dos filmes. Propõe-se que o cinema de Ramsay privilegia uma matriz estética do íntimo e do detalhe do cotidiano, que possibilita o surgimento do afeto e revela sua potência poética e política.

[English below]
Este trabalho examina a relação entre as narrativas de causalidade mínima e a construção dos espaços e enquadramentos de corpos e paisagens nos dois primeiros longas-metragens de Lynne Ramsay, Ratcatcher (1999) e Morvern Callar (2002). Busca-se analisar como os filmes põem em cena os efeitos do trauma a partir de uma estética que privilegia o uso não convencional da escala — os pequenos detalhes em planos fechados contrastados com os planos abertos dos espaços — e do movimento — as intermitências da coreografia traçada pela câmera em movimento através de momentos fixos que parecem examinar os mínimos detalhes do espaço. Desse modo, a análise sugere que as escolhas estéticas de Ramsay, ao retratar narrativas minimalistas, criam paisagens afetivas a partir de uma experiência sensorial e corpórea dos filmes. Propõe que o cinema de Ramsay contribui para uma tendência no cinema realizado por mulheres que privilegia uma matriz estética do íntimo e do detalhe do cotidiano, revelando assim a potência de uma poética e de uma política de um “cinema menor” feminino.

There’s No Place Like Home: Affective Landscapes in Lynne Ramsay’s Cinema
This paper examines the relationship between narratives of minimum causality and the construction of spaces and the framing of the bodies and landscapes in Lynne Ramsay’s first two feature-length films, Ratcatcher (1999) e Morvern Callar (2002). It analyzes how the films portray the effects of trauma from an aesthetics that prioritizes the unconventional use of scale—the small details in close-up contrasted to the long shots of the spaces—and of movement—the intermittences of the choreography designed by the moving camera through static moments that seem to examine the minimum details of the space. Hence, the analysis suggests that Ramsay’s aesthetic choices in depicting minimalist narratives create affective landscapes from the sensorial and embodies experience of the films. It contends that the films contribute to a trend in contemporary women’s filmmaking that privileges an aesthetic dimension of everyday details and intimacy, thus revealing the potentiality of a poetics and a politics of a feminine “minor cinema”.