On one level, CENTRAL STATION seems formidably local. The film has been called an allegory for Brazil an its contemporary problems. While a national director has no obligation to 'explain' his country to the uninitiated, some of Salles' references can be opaque to the outsider. The Central Station itself seems to represent a confluence of all the ghastly failures of modern Brazil from which our heros escape to find a kind of order. Untranslated slogans permeate the film, placenames seem to be weightily resonant, characters and situations seem to belong more particularly to this culture.
And yet the film has been acclaimed worldwide. This is presumably because it uses that age-old universal structure - the quest. The film actually conflates two in its storyline - the search of a young boy for his father (and hence, I presume, his place in society, masculinity, Brazilian heritage etc.), and an old woman's regaining her identity and humanity.
When we first see Dora, she is a maliciously detached, cold, godlike figure, a letter-writer in a shockingly illiterate Brazil, mocking and abusing the unfortunates who put their trust in her. At one point she sells the recently bereaved boy to buy a new TV. Her tragedy is her frigid solipsism, and the film traces her emotional thawing, her move from an imperious, sterile, changeless present, to her recognition of her place in history (her reciting family memories), and her own identity as a woman who belongs to a community of others, accountable to others (see the many mirror scenes; her putting on lipstick to reclaim her feminity). By the end she realises that letters and writing are not irrelevancies, but possessed of a fetishistic power, representing real people and hope.
Her quest is heavily linked with religious imagery - she and the boy evoke the Madonna and child; the pair's bleakest moment is played out against a religious rally straight out of the Dark Ages. The very real power of this nocturnal scene, though, is revealed to be Elvis-like kitsch by daylight.
The boy's quest, beginning like a Roald Dahl story with the almost whimsical death of a mother, is framed as a road-movie, heavily quoting those classics of the genre - THE SEARCHERS and PARIS, TEXAS. His journey is an attempt to impose order on the chaos represented by Central Station, but life is less malleable than this. Those films' conclusions are here reversed: the missing relative isn't found, but the hero does find a family. Indeed, his father takes on the quality of a benevolent Godot-like figure.
The film is saved from maudlin sentimentality (an unforgivably lush score softens any of the horrors the film hints at) by a refusal to simplify or seek easy closure; by a very ambiguous, problematic and arguably misogynistic ending; and by the remarkably tough perfomance of Fernanda Montenegro. CENTRAL STATION is, however, too derivative and conservative to be considered a success.
And yet the film has been acclaimed worldwide. This is presumably because it uses that age-old universal structure - the quest. The film actually conflates two in its storyline - the search of a young boy for his father (and hence, I presume, his place in society, masculinity, Brazilian heritage etc.), and an old woman's regaining her identity and humanity.
When we first see Dora, she is a maliciously detached, cold, godlike figure, a letter-writer in a shockingly illiterate Brazil, mocking and abusing the unfortunates who put their trust in her. At one point she sells the recently bereaved boy to buy a new TV. Her tragedy is her frigid solipsism, and the film traces her emotional thawing, her move from an imperious, sterile, changeless present, to her recognition of her place in history (her reciting family memories), and her own identity as a woman who belongs to a community of others, accountable to others (see the many mirror scenes; her putting on lipstick to reclaim her feminity). By the end she realises that letters and writing are not irrelevancies, but possessed of a fetishistic power, representing real people and hope.
Her quest is heavily linked with religious imagery - she and the boy evoke the Madonna and child; the pair's bleakest moment is played out against a religious rally straight out of the Dark Ages. The very real power of this nocturnal scene, though, is revealed to be Elvis-like kitsch by daylight.
The boy's quest, beginning like a Roald Dahl story with the almost whimsical death of a mother, is framed as a road-movie, heavily quoting those classics of the genre - THE SEARCHERS and PARIS, TEXAS. His journey is an attempt to impose order on the chaos represented by Central Station, but life is less malleable than this. Those films' conclusions are here reversed: the missing relative isn't found, but the hero does find a family. Indeed, his father takes on the quality of a benevolent Godot-like figure.
The film is saved from maudlin sentimentality (an unforgivably lush score softens any of the horrors the film hints at) by a refusal to simplify or seek easy closure; by a very ambiguous, problematic and arguably misogynistic ending; and by the remarkably tough perfomance of Fernanda Montenegro. CENTRAL STATION is, however, too derivative and conservative to be considered a success.