\n<\/p>\n
Early in \u201cPictures of Ghosts,\u201d an exhilarating documentary about specters onscreen and off, the Brazilian director Kleber Mendon\u00e7a Filho, pulls out a VHS tape. It\u2019s of a 1981 TV interview with his mother, Joselice, a historian who died at age 54. In close-up, she discusses gathering information left out of history, an approach that her son has embraced here. After the tape abruptly cuts off, he says in voice-over, \u201cit may seem like I\u2019m discussing methodology\u201d \u2014 as if speaking now both for his mother and for himself \u2014 \u201cbut I\u2019m talking about love.\u201d<\/p>\n
Love suffuses \u201cPictures of Ghosts,\u201d a cleareyed, deeply personal and formally inspired rumination on life, death, family, movies and those complicated, invariably haunted places we call home. Divided into three fluidly edited sections that build into a cohesive whole, the movie draws from both original and archival material, including photographs, newsreels, home movies, amateur films and images sampled from Mendon\u00e7a Filho\u2019s features. The results unfold at the crossroads of fiction and documentary, a space that Mendon\u00e7a Filho knows well. \u201cFiction films are the best documentaries,\u201d as a character in a movie says here.<\/p>\n
A film critic turned filmmaker, Mendon\u00e7a Filho is best known for his own fictional movies, most notably \u201cAquarius\u201d (2016). A nuanced, idiosyncratic drama set in his hometown, Recife, a northeastern port city on the Atlantic coast, it centers on a music critic (S\u00f4nia Braga), her circle of intimates, the enviably ocean-facing apartment in which she lives and the gentrification that she resists. It\u2019s about stasis and change, memory and loss, art and commerce as well as a struggle for sovereignty. The building\u2019s owners are trying to force her out, which means that it\u2019s also about money and power \u2014 all themes that haunt \u201cPictures of Ghosts.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cAquarius\u201d is also about the critic\u2019s bright, roomy apartment, one that Mendon\u00e7a Filho knows intimately, having lived in it \u201cone way or another\u201d for much of his life, as he explains in the voice-over. His mother bought it in 1979 and Mendon\u00e7a Filho was 10 when they moved in; later, he lived there with his own family. With his mother\u2019s encouragement, the apartment became an endlessly useful (sound) stage for his youthful cinematic dreams. He drops in clips from some of the dozen or so movies he made in it, including images from his early works and later films like \u201cNeighboring Sounds<\/a>\u201d (2012). In one early snippet, a poster for Hitchcock\u2019s \u201cPsycho\u201d is mounted on a door; in \u201cAquarius,\u201d a poster for Kubrick\u2019s \u201cBarry Lyndon\u201d hangs on a wall, an emblem of the Braga character\u2019s sensibilities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cPictures of Ghosts\u201d is steeped in Mendon\u00e7a Filho\u2019s seemingly boundless cinephilia. With smoothly dynamic editing, he revisits the foundation for that movie love in the first section \u2014 love that here feels inseparable from his love for his mother and for the home they shared \u2014 and comes to an apotheosis in the second and longest section. In this part, \u201cThe Cinemas of Downtown Recife,\u201d he revisits this rundown district of the city. From roughly the ages of 13 to 25, he explains in his measured, lightly melancholic narration, he journeyed downtown several times a week to watch movies. At the time, the area was a hub of activity crowded with people and busy cinemas; it looks like a ghost town now.<\/p>\n As he does throughout, Mendon\u00e7a Filho associatively jumps from idea to idea, space to space, image to image (a glamorous Janet Leigh, scenes from the city\u2019s carnival). Everything \u2014 art and politics, past and present \u2014 flows into a seamless whole. At one point, he scans a page from a 1970s newspaper filled with tiny movie ads, most for \u201cKing Kong\u201d flicks that presumably sought to exploit the popularity of the Dino De Laurentiis remake. At the bottom of the page, though, he also singles out an ad for \u201cDona Flor and Her Two Husbands,\u201d the 1978 film that made Braga an international star, bringing this movie back to \u201cAquarius.\u201d<\/p>\n For all of its humor and buoyancy there\u2019s a strain of sadness in \u201cPictures of Ghosts,\u201d and glimmers of anger. At one point, Mendon\u00e7a Filho visits a derelict building that once housed offices for the major Hollywood studios. \u201cThe industry sets up the infrastructure for distribution,\u201d he says as he tours the desolate halls, \u201cthen throws it all out.\u201d The crisis-plagued movie industry, as any film lover knows, always breaks your heart. Even so, as Mendon\u00e7a Filho gracefully proves in scene after scene, there are always filmmakers who restore your faith by, say, turning a loving home into a love of cinema. And while he and his family have now moved out of the apartment, I also have faith that he will never truly leave it.<\/p>\n Pictures of Ghosts<\/strong>
Not rated. In Portuguese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n