One of my favorite freelance gigs is giving talks to local cinema clubs. The groups mostly are comprised of people over 50, which is my preferred demographic of human beings. As Louis CK once said, “Even the dumbest seventy-year-old is going to have seen more than the smartest twenty-year-old.” The following is a lecture I gave to a Westchester club about “Aquarius,” a long, demanding film that nonetheless held us rapt.
“Aquarius,” a film about Clara (Sonia Braga), a retired Brazilian music critic’s battle to keep her apartment despite pressure from real estate developers and her own family, is about so many things at once. It is a revenge thriller of sorts. It is a treatise on real estate development, greed, and the politics of housing, an issue we also are confronting here in the United States. It is is a rallying point for the Brazilian left, as many citizens in that country identify Clara with the Brazilian president impeached earlier this year in what many describe as a right-wing legislative coup d’état. But most importantly, at least to me, “Aquarius” is an unhurried, almost luxuriant portrayal of a complex sixtysomething woman who has led a very full life, and is still healthy and engaged enough to have many more years of joy and pains ahead of her. Continue Reading →
