Barren Lives (1963) - Nelson Pereira dos Santos

​This Nelson Pereira dos Santos guy is a pretty essential filmmaker huh? In a certain regard, Barren Lives is more minimalist conceptually than his earlier films I've seen (Rio, North Zone & Rio, 40 Degrees C.). It's less politically complex or pointed but it also feels like his most visually expressive, at least as it pertains to his use of lighting. The aesthetic is really focused on the raw, elemental power of the sun. Nature's omnipresence, one that gives and takes without reservation or acknowledgment of man, is embedded into the visual grammar of this film. Survivalism, the need for shelter, and the general struggle are beautifully rendered, and despite the assertion that this film wallows in miserablism, what it feels like to me is Pereira dos Santos aimed more to exhibit the plight of so many and when considered in the context of his other two films, I found it to be a beautiful, albeit difficult social-realist experience. The diasporic plight of the man in the age of industrialization, the shift from agrarian fields to the industrialized cities, is told through a neorealist framework that combines western topography with a formal style more expressive than I expected.