Cinematical

Sand is an easy metaphor for time, and a pretty obvious one, too, but that doesn't mean a film can't succeed despite milking the metaphor for all its worth. Stories set exclusively in the desert have a lot of sand to work with, after all, and not much else. The House of Sand, which takes place in the area of northern Brazil now known as Lençóis Maranhenses National Park, an area that isn't a desert but has many of the characteristics of one, shows that living amidst sand and more sand can be so monotonous that perhaps counting the grains to pass the time is sometimes all one has.

Of course, no one actually counts sand in the film, but the grains are used to show time passing, whether in such a blatant shot as the close-up of sand trickling down the side of a dune or in more narrative-essential imagery like the shifting appearance of the landscape. Fortunately the film doesn't actually consist of people sitting around waiting for the scenery to change, either. Instead, The House of Sand plays out over the course of almost sixty years, and its progression of time is primarily, and more significantly, marked by man's advancements in science and technology, with their ability to seemingly make the world, and the universe, smaller.

While following the lives of three generations of women stuck in the desolate region from 1910 to 1969, the film is especially interested in modes of transportation, and how in the 20th century they not only give us a sense of the time period, but they make remote areas less remote. As time goes by, the land inhabited by the women becomes more accessible and, although it is never more increasingly frequented, each focused period of their lives is triggered by a visit from outsiders.

As the film begins, Áurea (Fernanda Torres) is migrating to her new desert-like home in a caravan that includes her crazy, domineering husband, Vasco (Ruy Guerra), a man who thinks the sandy plains are a prosperous land, and her mother, Dona Maria (Fernanda Montenegro). After an impractical house is partially built atop a dune, Vasco is forced to give up many of his belongings to members of a nearby camp founded by runaway slaves. Then his workers flee in the night, taking the rest of his livestock and supplies, and he foolishly gets himself killed by his own madness. Alone and free, the abandoned women hope to return to the city, but Áurea is pregnant and so they must wait for her to give birth before they can set out on the journey together.

The story then jumps ahead nine years. Áurea has a daughter, Maria (Camilla Facundes), and they, along with Dona Maria, still live in the house on the dune, although now the house is sinking, sitting between dunes instead of atop one. They have also befriended one of the men from the nearby camp, Massu (Seu Jorge), who has introduced Áurea to a traveling salt salesman (Emiliano Queiroz), who may be able to lead her out. When that plan doesn't work out, Áurea tries to leave with a scientific expedition, which is in the area studying a solar eclipse, but she misses that chance as well. Eventually she realizes that it is her destiny to stay.

For the next two focused times, the film utilizes the strengths of its brilliant actresses. Real-life mother and daughter, Montenegro and Torres, each take on new roles for a sequence set in 1942, in which Áurea (Montenegro) and Maria (now Torres) are older. It isn't enough to have the actresses merely inhabiting the different characters, though. We need to see how different Maria is from her mother at the same age, despite perfectly resembling her, and the same goes for Áurea, too. The actresses do this so well that at times it is easy to forget that we are seeing the same two performers as before. For the purposes of the film's cyclical story, however, it is not always important to differentiate the roles. Maria and Áurea are, respectively, in similar situations to those of Áurea and Dona Maria twenty-three years earlier, except Maria wants to leave not because she misses the city, but because she's never seen it; Áurea, on the other hand, is content with life in the sand, because she has fallen in love with Massu (now Luiz Melodia).

It is in the final sequence, set in 1969, where things do get a little silly, as the sand metaphor is stretched to the point of being a joke, with the final line serving as its punchline, and the device used to depict the aging of characters is taken a little too far. This time Montenegro plays both Maria and Áurea, made up to look younger for the former and older for the latter. The effects are old-fashioned, with each character simply filmed from over the shoulder of the other, the hokey mode of trickery used long ago to present one actor or actress portraying twins. Montenegro is good enough to make the whole thing work, but just barely.

As for the male actors, fans of Jorge and/or Melodia may be surprised to learn that neither of the men portraying Massu gets a chance to sing. Music is scarce in The House of Sand, because there is a notable lack of it in the film's setting. Music is one of the things missed most by Áurea, and so to have a prominent, sweeping score would be to ignore her suffering. Certainly the film could have allowed for Massu to be vocally gifted, though, as long as two well-known singers are playing him. The men are not wasted since they are both also phenomenal actors, but it is a little strange that the film treats music as something that can not be made by individuals without real instruments. In fact, the film does actually have a score, composed by Carlo Bartolini and João Barone, which is more subtle and unconventional than most, and it consists of experimental sounds in the place of typical music.

In a way, it is good that the women are not upstaged by singing actors. The House of Sand belongs to Torres and Montenegro, alone, just as it should. For anyone who has seen The English Patient, with its feminization of the desert, the sand dune setting will be more associated with the female characters than with the male, anyway -- not that we need another sand metaphor after the strained representation of time and a less transparent theme of relativity.

Today we can look at a satellite map of Brazil and hardly notice that there is a small desert-like land mass along the northern coast, but to watch this film, or more importantly to have lived in the region at any time, the place seems enormous. Additionally, life in the sand may get more bearable as one gets older, due to the way time seems to go by quicker year after year (certainly this is why the film drags at first). When it comes to this film, however, there is no room for relativity where appreciation and enjoyment are concerned. The House of Sand is not relatively wonderful; it is absolutely wonderful.