The Second Circle

Viewed April 4, 2016. An absolutely brutal film about a man planning his father's funeral. The images are haunted and sepulchral, brimming with the vestiges of decay and the complete desolation of grief.

A young man is confronted with the reality of what death means for the poor who try to subsist in a crumbling bureaucratic society. The Tarkovsky influence has never been clearer (dripping water, burning house, sepia tones, slow camera, sorrowful classical music near the end, etc.), but without ever approaching the master’s heights. The scene in which he fights the undertaker at least breaks things up a little, but plays somewhere between amateur theatrics and professional farce.

O Segundo Circulo estreava há 30 anos no Festival de Toronto. É claro que a primeira coisa que vem à nossa mente ao ver esse filme é ele ser uma alegoria do fim da União Soviética, mas li por aí que ele também pode ser o luto pela morte do Tarkovski. Independente qual o sentido exato, o filme para me pé por si só como sentido do luto exato materialista, o que é palpável na nossa primeira apreensão da morte, da perda. DVDrip PirateBay.

A dream where we witness the main character trying yo reconcile with the image of his father as his "mother" scorns him and somehow teaches to be a man. The burning house is a Tarkovsky effect I guess :)

"The Second Circle is awash in the pain of loss, yet how often grim comedy breaks through the austere surface." - Fernando F. Croce