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One of the films presented was “Not
by Chance” (Não Por Acaso), directed by Philippe Barcinski, a Brazilian film
released in 2007. The story follows a sequence of occurrences in the lives of
two men in São Paulo, one of the largest cities in the world: Pedro (Rodrigo
Santoro), who loves to play snooker and works as a carpenter making pool tables
and Enio (Leonardo Medeiros), who is a city traffic engineer.
Traffic Controller
Enio (Leonardo Medeiros)
Life is unpredictable. In the film each of these
men loses a woman he loves in separate accidents. Their lives suddenly change,
and they slowly realize that because they have been obsessed with, in one case
the intricacies of playing a game, or in the other, regulating the complex set
up of city streets, they cannot fully enjoy life because real life cannot be
controlled.
Teresa (Branca
Messina)
The film has a 60’s feel to it in the sense that the story unravels slowly and
thoughtfully. Pedro analyzes his snooker plays before he practices his shots.
Like Enio who controls the city’s roads, he controls the movement of one ball so
that it will hit in just the right spot to sink a shot, but at the same time set
up the other balls perfectly for his next shot. He is precise and determined
Pedro
(Rodrigo Santoro)
Enio controls the flux of cars. He watches for trouble spots and reroutes the
cars if problems occur, such as an accident or stalled car. Ironically, it is a
traffic accident that disrupts the life of each of these men. The accident
becomes the symbol of an imperfection - something that these men could not
control.
The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges in his short story “The Garden of Forking
Paths,” indicates “Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures. In one of
them I am your enemy…. The future already exists.”
These men have lived their lives as prisoners of
their occupations.
Borges also writes in “Funes the Memorious” of Ireneo, who has always “looked
without seeing, listened without hearing….” It takes a fall from a half-tamed
horse that paralyzes him to initiate change as it suddenly thrusts him into an
almost intolerable richness and sharpness of life. The problem is that he
remembers too much, too many details. He can’t think because “To think is to
forget differences, generalize, and make abstractions. In the teeming world of
Funes, there were only details, almost immediate in their presence…. a useless
mental catalogue of all the images in his memory.”
The film is also a story about love - loves lost and loves found, whether it be
with a new woman or a suddenly discovered daughter. It’s the relationships we
have with others that really matter.
Bia (Rita Batata) and Enio
Shooting a film in a big city has its problems. “We took over four thousand
pictures of different locations,” the director Barcinski explains. “The city had
to give the feeling of possibilities of encounter and isolation.” If you live in
a big city, you will have experienced this.
Barcinski is known for his short films; he’s won
over 40 awards. “Not by Chance” is his first feature. He spent five years
developing the screenplay.
Time well spent. The film is complex, sensitive
and impressive |
