A Treat of Coutinho (2019) - full transcript

- Good morning.
- Good morning.

- What's your name?
- Luiza.

- How old are you?
- Six.

Six?

Have you ever heard of God?

- Yeah.
- What is it?

He's a man who died.

He's a man who died?
That's wonderful.

But... who was this man who died?

His name is God.

- Uh?
- We call him God, but, but...



The man who died
we call him God?

- Yes.
- Why?

That I don't know.

I don't know...

I don't know.

- Do you know how to pray?
- I do.

Show me.

Our Father who art in heaven,
hal? hallowed be your name,

thy kingdom come,

thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those
who trespass against us,

and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil, amen.

How beautiful,
it has to end with that.



Thank you very much.

Do you know how to get down
from there by yourself?

- Yes.
- Look!

Check out her shoes.

This is called a varnish shoe,
what do you call it?

Flats.

- Flats?
- Yep.

You look very pretty,
you know that?

You look like a lady.
Do you know what lady is?

- No.
- You don't know, do you?

- No.
- That's great, a lady is...

She's a very pretty woman.

Ok?

- Now call your relatives.
- Give Coutinho a hug here.

- Call your relatives.
- Give Coutinho a hug.

Get out the door.

Now I have to give
you a high five.

You can go there, Luiza.

That's why I had to shoot a kid.
Then the sadness of adolescence.

A child is wonderful,
if I had, it was better that?

She returned!

They're innocent
and cruel.

But there you go, then I'm sad because the
movie should have been made with children.

- Now, you have time if you want.
- Have you thought of that?

It is wonderful.
Let's do it.

The child alone.
Wandering.

Let's do it!

- "God is the man who died".
- It's wonderful.

January 27th, 2012.

Two years after our first meeting,

I proposed a few hours of a
filmed conversation with Coutinho.

He didn't remember who I was.

Are we okay?
No, okay... fine.

Coutinho, thank you? First? - No,
let's see how long it's gonna take.

Oh, c'mon...

Fucking shit, I'm down,
you caught me on a day that...

- Oh, Coutinho, the first question that I will...
- Is it already rolling?

- Is it on?
- No need to redo it, the audio assures it.

If you don't have the image it's ok,
it's only the audio.

- Okay.
- Go.

What is...
I think the question that...

What's that for now, what is it for,
for a piece that you're doing...

No, it's a movie.
I'm making a movie...

- Oh, it's a movie. Is not a thesis?
- No, no.

There are some ideas that
I wanted to propose, so we could talk...

Yes, but is it a movie you're
doing for yourself or for the school?

No, to myself.

I wanted to read you a text
here from Levi Strauss.

I never had and still do not have the
perception of feeling my personal identity...

Yeah, I read it the other day.

I appear to myself as the place where
something is going on,

but there is no "I".

Yeah, I saw this...

Several of these things I
read a short time ago.

This was published...
the newspaper published a story about...

- A book, right?
- About a book, right?

He died long ago.

In which he talks about
Levi Strauss and...

Well, a little article about
Levi Strauss, nothing new.

But it has that quote.

Yeah, I might feel like that.

It is possible that I feel like that.

?Cause in that lecture you said to Jean
Claude, "the other is made up of you"...

Oh, that's obvious for me, right?

That's one thing I don't think anyone in the
world... There's no Robinson Crusoe, you know?

By the way, Robinson Crusoe
ends up finding Friday.

But when he is alone...

And when he writes, Defoe, is the author,
he stands before another who is the reader,

but the character himself, he's isolated
on an island, we are not isolated.

I only exist through
the eyes of others.

You know?

So, just like the other is constitutive
of me, I am constitutive of the other.

And in that sense,
I always say:

This thing, symmetry,
is a drag.

"This thing I'll decide,
so and such.

Because there's an asymmetrical relationship
of power between me and the other person.

The other person can be the president,

but if I have the camera, I can wait for the government
to be over and do whatever I want with that image.

Distort, comment. So, the power
of the camera is tremendous.

But this thing of asymmetry

is an assumed asymmetry in which, precisely, I
try to make it the least asymmetric possible.

Of course I edit it.

There's no such illusion as, "you're going
to edit your movie", that doesn't exist.

These movies that they make...

That they make,
it's interesting sometimes.

Brazilian natives filming themselves.
This is something else.

But the...

The problem you have is this,
then there's a...

There's a thing, a meeting, and it's
a conflict of one person with another,

which is the substance
of the thing.

The fact told
doesn't matter,

what matters is that at one point there was
an encounter and those people said that.

And I try to keep the
traces of the speech.

The guy asked me a thing, if I was "gonna
give a job" and I don't know what to answer.

I try to leave traces...

Because, you speak at the spot,
then the person speaks at the spot.

If she wants to correct it,
she can correct it and so on if...

And I say things then that
I shouldn't have said.

Or should've said it later or
shouldn't have said it like that.

But I think it's great when the
trace of a mistake remains there.

May 2010.

My first meeting with Coutinho.

I propose to him a film about his work that
goes from "Playing to "20 Years Later",

asking the following question:

Would Coutinho have
always made the same film?

What movie is it?

In all of Coutinho's films,

characters, actors,
from the same play?

I can only

try to put myself in someone
else's place, which is utopic,

but it's a good utopia,

if I let go of my prejudice...

Then it's connected to a thing from another guy I
read, with a lot of anger, but at the same time...

There was this guy, he was extraordinary,
and at the same time annoying by...

By his rationalism,
Pierre Bordieu.

This is an example,
I kept here.

He has a 700-page book
called "The Weight of the World".

Which I read. It's in the living
room here.

Then, there's a chapter,

not the whole thing, but
I don't know, about 20 pages,

where he talks about interview.

And to me they
are extraordinary,

especially coming from someone
materialistic and rationalist like him.

And there's a paragraph
that he says

that the interview, for him,
is a kind of spiritual exercise,

when there is a
conversion of the gaze,

you let go of everything,

to try to put yourself
in someone else's shoes,

which of course it's
a utopia, no one does.

And he continues this,

this that he quotes in this text,
that I have already quoted elsewhere,

it never continues,

where he says, "this is more or less
like Spinoza's spiritual love,

which he says is
the joyful agreement

with everything that happens
in the natural world".

Which has always bothered me,
do you agree with torture?

That's not quite like that,
you know?

Agreement with the natural world,
at least, you know?

And that for me is, it's a starting point,
I don't, I don't make a movie to...

Imagine making a movie say
that television is bad or good,

or against money,
these things don't exist.

What exists, just because it exists,
interests me, you see?

Is your mom here?

She ain't.

- Chico?
- Here he comes.

I'm here.

Did something stranger come up?

Why?

We came to say goodbye.

Are you leaving?

Sunday, then maybe we won't see each
other, I really enjoyed the conversation.

Oh, and "it was my pleasure"
and they're filming.

- Shooting.
- What?

They're filming me!

Because we liked
your talk.

- They did?
- Yes, or we wouldn't come back.

And anyone, if you
think they liked it,

wherever you are, you can call me that
I'm ready to say the same thing.

That's good, one year from now,
when the movie is done.

- Oh, in a year?
- We'll come back here.

I can't guarantee
I'll be alive.

- Why?
- Because I can't.

Why?

For me.
For what I feel.

- For your health.
- Yeah.

You've gotta have faith
and treat yourself.

Faith? Faith?

If it was by faith, I was already
on my way to heaven.

Now, that side is better,
isn't it, for us to talk, right?

- Why do you say that?
- No, I give it a "changer".

Look, look?

You...

You've made a change, huh?

- Ah, yes.
- You could've been a movie star.

You made the change yourself,
I never saw that.

But even though, but even if I was,
but if I've never worked, what for?

Why, you're the one saying it.

You're the one that changed
and made a change.

No, but I made a change, do you know
why? ?Cause I'm tired, you know.

And making that change
you can rest?

Yeah, either it looks
nice or ugly.

And you have a profile,
now there's another one.

- One of them will do.
- But well, is it possible that you

fight to get me, you never catch, and I
always keep on always on the same line?

I wonder why.

I know.
Because you're the smart one.

- Why?
- Because you are.

Why?

Well, if I were smart I was the one going
filming and looking for people, right?

Am I wrong?

No, but I came to see you
twice because you're smart too.

I know.

- Do you think I'm smart?
- I do.

How?

Just because I'm being filmed like this,
cause it came this...

These men...
It's the way.

No, even without filming,
if I had a word with you,

I would see that you had some
interesting ideas?

What a pity, right?

And what I know,
I don't say.

I just started it.

Gabriel, from the film Memory Thread"
he was very impressive.

He was very?
Very strong.

And I remember there
was an angel, too.

Yeah, the angel is when
I went to his cemetery,

where he was buried,

and I didn't know that, that every
body there, in 5 years turns to bones,

they give it to the family,
throw it out!

I didn't know that,
so I saw a lot of bags...

His grave, I think it had already
been removed or not.

And there were those bags, with the
tibia showing up, so I filmed that,

and because I was in the cemetery,

I shot the bags, that is,
"who is Gabriel today".

I had an angel, and the angel is
in honor of Walter Benjamin, explicitly.

This reference is known as "The angel
of history". He compares a picture,

which is an angel
with the wings open.

Got it?

Saying that's the angel
of history, right?

He's facing back and
only sees ruins.

That's the past
and the present.

And he's, as if he's being carried
by the wind, that is progress.

That's an extraordinary sight,
then this thing of the angel,

that only sees the ruins and
that can't stop the progress,

that he was against the notion of progress,
the traditional notion of time and so.

So, I happened to find this cemetery
and I said, "This angel is,

I'm gonna include it". No one ever talked about
the movie, about this reason it may have.

And in the cemetery,
there could be an angel.

So I filmed,
I wasn't out of...

The scheme, more or less, realistic. And
I filmed it because of Walter Benjamin.

And it's a shot that lasts
about 10 seconds,

and the cool thing about
the shot it's that it

it's an angel,
just like all angels,

but the light changes in
the middle of the shot.

And I thought,
by chance,

I thought it was wonderful that it starts with a
clear sun and has a cloud covering it like that.

Then I left that part that starts
in one light and ends with the other.

But nobody saw this movie,
only on television...

Chico, Jo?o, Domingo,
Nen?, Fulorzina...

These people lived here in the
Vinhateiro in 1910.

They're all gone.

I stayed here to watch over
these things and I'm still doing it.

85-year-olds are already senile,

they can no longer talk
in a device like that,

then an old man
comes in and asks:

"Don't you forget of the oldest stuff?",

"No, sir, I don't forget".

The things that happened 50,
60 years ago, I remember everything.

The people here,
they're all modern people,

it's all people from 1900 onwards,

there's hardly anyone
from 1800 anymore.

But there's still me.

You need these older people to keep
an eye on these older things,

that's for the modern folks
who are coming to know it.

You need these older people

to keep an eye on those older things,

that's for the modern folks
who are coming to know it.

But I saw it, and I'll tell others
how it was, right?

I read Benjamin long
before 20 Years"..

I was in love, not with his
marxism, but with his melancholy,

his messianism.

Messianism and
melancholy at the same time.

And I thought a lot of
Benjamin making the movie.

And look at the coco of estabilo-bilo-bilo o
l? l?, look at the coco of estabilo-bilo-b?.

Dear lady why does this boy cry?

For the sake of it, wanting to nurse.

Look at the coco of estabilo-bilo-bilo o l?
l?, and look at the coco of estabilo-bilo-b?.

Dear lady why does this boy cry?

For the sake of it,
wanting some beating up.

The accused is a
repeat offender,

proving himself to be a
criminal in his own right,

unoccupied, cynical and
with a concealed character.

Doctor,

I found this man handing out
pamphlets on the street, arrest him!

Thus, it is necessary
to sentence him,

since he confessed to the practice
of crime when heard in court,

emphasizing the will to carry out
the conduct and produce the result.

I deem the punitive
claim of the State

to proceed to 10 years of
seclusion in a closed regime.

You hoped we'd come back
to complete the movie, didn't you?

I always had this hope,

that you were coming back
to complete the film.

I always thought about it,

my mother was still alive
and said, "well, son..."

she said "oh, that time is not coming
anymore", and I said "it is, mommy,

it just doesn't come for
those who die".

Soon after our
arrival in Galileia,

we improvised the projection of the material
filmed in 1962 and 64 for the Engenho community.

The actors of the film were our
special guests for the projection.

I made a film called Cabra" in 64.

As you know, it was cut short
by the coup, and so and such.

After that I did in 6 years, 3 fictions,
2 feature films and 1 medium length,

til I went back to journalism,

Globo Reporter, and then I end up
making Cabra", 20 years later.

Well, during these 10-15 years

that I did feature films
and all, I had to write my

filmography and I always put:

1964, Cabra marcado
para morrer, unfinished"..

65, 66, 67, 68 and 69 I made movies,
I had to send a filmography,

it was after Act 5.

70 is when
I made my last movie,

then I sent there, name, I don't know, birth date,
some things about life and then your filmography.

Then I'd put: Cabra marcado
para morrer, unfinished",

ABC of Love, 1967,
medium length".

But this for me
was a thing that was...

And I'd get upset because all the crew, all
the staff from Cabra"... no one did the same.

I never complained, but I...

No one.

So that, if I didn't do
20 Years Later"...

it'd be something that years later someone?d
say there were some guys that filmed there"..

It was something that
gave me a great deal of pain?

I was gonna be a guy with
a lot of resentment, because

I was pissed that they didn't say
it was a movie that was interrupted.

And it was never published
anywhere, no newspaper or nothing,

and I'd be pissed, but I could only
prove it if I made the movie, got it?

So, I at least put it in my
filmography: "unfinished".

This is the thing,

I am very far removed

from certain movements.

I fell into this movement,
for example, when I, 16 years ago,

I lived around Engenho,

that this revolutionary
movement arrived.

Just a moment,

there's sound, it's windy.
Cut.

You can tell me what
you're saying, it's perfect, ok?

Ok?

You can speak, Mr. Mariano, no problem, don't
worry, you tell us how you live and that's it.

Oh, Mr. Mariano?

We came to Para?ba to try
to make a movie in 4 weeks

without any previous research.

No specific theme,
no particular location,

we want to find a
rural community

that we like and
that accepts us.

Maybe we won't find it soon and keep
looking at other places and villages,

maybe we won't find any,

and then the movie becomes
the search for a location,

a theme and, above all,
for characters.

I also ate this mucun? the
same way in 58, when I was little.

But I have the memory that
I have eaten, as they say, by force.

My stepmother, stepfather of my stepmother,
forced me to eat the bread of this mucun?.

Without me wanting.

I put the first spoonful in my mouth and threw
it away because my stomach didn't accept it.

Then she beat me up and forced
me to eat the mucun? bread.

1976,

Globo Reporter.

The end and the beginning
of the same method.

Coutinho was born
as a documentarist,

found his first actor.

The speech,
the gestures,

the totality of what's possible
in the heart of one.

I gave up on fiction and then
I decided not to be an artist.

I'm being contradictory,
because at the same time...

I'm saying this "I don't want to be
an artist", "I ain't no artist",

but I would like others to think I am.
But we are contradictions, right?

But it's not?
Well?

I hate beauty in the sense
of harmony.

Now I think there's a rough beauty,
that's the one that interests me.

Coutinho?
You lived in this building.

- I lived for 6 months, something like that, 5 months.
- Really?

35 years, or around,
36 years ago?.

But they said it was a scandal,
but I didn't notice anything.

I lived for 6 months here. I lived with Nelson
Xavier, a famous actor, then I lived alone.

But, okay, it didn't have it.
I felt...

I have nothing else to say,
nothing, absolutely nothing.

- How was it, how was your life?
- How is it for you to make a movie in this building?

The fact that I lived here
doesn't change much.

Yeah, maybe indirectly,
unconsciously it may play a role, but...

The seriousness with
which the guy films.

How was your life back then?
What did you do?

Oh, it was very bad. It was
really bad, period, bye. Cut.

You said, "I lie a lot".

Yep, I'm a big liar!

I tell lies and I think for
us to lie, we have to believe it.

We must believe the lie,
it gets easier for it to be well told!

I'm like that,
I'm a big liar.

I even cry for
myself to believe in my own lie,

Yeah, but you know that there are lies

that I end up believing
they are true?

And one thing, what did you lie
about in this conversation today?

Oh, now I didn't lie.

Yesterday I lied to them.

- Did you?
- Yeah.

I lied to them because I didn't wanna
come, I was afraid to do this interview,

I said "see, I'm going out, I don't know
what time I'm gonna come back".

As soon as you left,
I came.

I didn't want to come,
I was afraid.

But today I wasn't lying,
today I really forgot.

And it didn't even cross my mind
that I had to do an interview,

I was tripping, today,
I didn't even remember.

But I lied yesterday. For you to
see how I'm a truthful liar.

I tell the lie,
but I speak the truth.

The coolest thing is if the person says
such serious things near me,

you'd say "this guy it was
etched on their memory".

I wasn't!

The experience I have is
the following: the guys from "Master"

they recognize and talk

a lot more with people
from the staff,

who saw them before,
than with me.

I really am a
ghost to them.

It's as if my gaze

asked them and
made them speak,

but it's as if their eyes
looked through,

I'm not an old man anymore
I become nobody, you know?

As if I were invisible, got it?
That's very curious.

All my movies,
I made them because I wanted to.

Starting with "The Mighty Spirit"
which was like this

"I'm gonna make a movie
that no one wants and can do.

Because you can want
and not be able to...

imagine, cinema is image...

or you don't wanna do it.
Because cinema is not that.

But then I knew
I was making a movie that...

97... and in 99 it was finished,

It's not today. There were no documentaries
that time. Five were released.

And the people around me hated it.
They said no one would take it.

Then I went to Gramado Festival
and I kept believing.

In Gramado it was the proof
that they were wrong.

That it was possible,
and at that time it was rare

to make a movie that...
with a thousand subtitles,

I have made films
with 1200 subtitles.

And that's why
abroad it's a tragedy.

- And it was a resurrection.
- Abroad it was a tragedy.

But it was a
resurrection, right?

Oh, yeah, totally.

For you, because besides no one believing,
Eduardo Coutinho was 20 Years Later"..

No, totally.
If it was received very bad

by critics, public, etc, possibly I
wouldn't have made any other film.

I don't know what I would have done
with my life, my life was...

Without meaning and?

No, it was?

It fell from heaven.

Now, you don't see her face,
you only feel, right?

No, I see.
She's old.

Yeah, but a pretty
old lady,

only dresses in white,
smokes a small pipe.

She said that
she was gonna kill me.

Like this: I'm gonna kill you,
I don't like you"..

Then, the one that helped me was
when her grandma came down.

The grandma said everything
that was going on.

In that shot you can
embed any belief, or not.

You don't say that
it exists or not.

But the fact that the
person says it existed,

symbolically, it exists.

Do you understand, or not?
This is a fundamental thing.

You know? Do not give opinion about it.
I don't give any.

It was even said a few times
that I was an atheist.

I don't know, man,
I never said I'm an atheist.

I also never said that I'm a
religious guy, no.

I have no religion, I have no faith,
I don't believe in eternal life...

But to say that I'm an atheist...
I don't use that word.

Atheist is the guy who believes,
damn it...

Who knows...
Damn it...

Who am I to know?

You know?

What are those
bracelets on your arm?

This is from my guides.

- Show me each one?
- I'm a spiritist.

Catholic and spiritist.

Oh, show?

What does it mean,
each one of these beans?

Each one of these are
an affirmation, a security.

And each one of these
belong to an Orix?.

Can you show each one,
to which Orix? is it?

Yes.

Grandma Cabinda,

Ogum,

Xang?,

Ox?ssi,

Oxum.

I've

never had comfort in life.

I've always lived
in the slums,

in bad houses,
by the mud, the dirt.

I've never had anything

and the little I have,
I have to fight to have it.

Now, why am I like this,

I just like expensive
shop windows,

only crystals, these things
that I know are not for me.

She said like this:
No, it's wrong,

you were a queen in Egypt,

you've had all this
gold, silver, jewelry,

and you came back to this life,

but you can't erase
everything,

because we bring to this life

some of the things
from other lives.

That's why you're like this.

Then I said and this queen, was
I a queen?" she said yyou were,

you were a queen.

Then I said so probably I was
a really bad person, Mrs. Sara"...

she said but back then
the queens were bad,

they ordered beatings
and killings and all.

Do you think you are paying for
the sins of the queen?

I have a debt, right?

A debt I brought.

That's why I live like this.

But I like pretty things,
I like good things!

Do you like music?

I love music,
I love Beethoven.

I even have his record here.

Beethoven?

Which song do you like the most?

I spent a whole
life there, right?

How's that?

I spent a whole life there
in the land where he was born.

Oh, you had another
life in Germany, where?

We have many lives, son,
many incarnations, right?

Do you think you've had a life at the same
time as Beethoven? That's why you like him?

That's why I like it. I can't read,
I don't understand a thing.

How can I like Beethoven,
don't you think this is weird?

Mrs. Tereza, tell me something,
are you happy?

Well, that's a question that I
leave on standby.

That's a question

that hurts me a
lot to answer.

Because in one part I'm happy,

but in another I'm not.

I don't want to cry.

I get emotional.

In another I'm not.

And I don't think I'll ever be.

I have no interest in returning
to the places I've filmed,

as I don't wanna go back to the
crime scene, because of the following:

the condensed of the
film is always superior,

because the reality
is a routine!

That condensed of 5, 7 minutes,
that the person had...

For me, that's the person.

In fact, the person
usurped...

This routine
usurps the person.

That's why it's fiction...

Almost fiction.

Because it's not the
person in the day by day.

Mrs. Tereza who is extraordinary
in "The Mighty Spirit",

if I meet her on the street for a
whole day, it's not extraordinary!

Extraordinary was that moment,
that summary.

The queen of Egypt, if she says it
the third time it's not the same.

It's not the same even repeating it
two days later, you see?

So yeah, that's one reason
that I don't seek contact.

No, this world...

It's magic, the movie is magic,
reality is not magic.

Reality, if I live it,
it's not.

In that sense there is
something fictional.

And they are usurping.

Just as they may think that
the "character" usurps them,

but in fact they are usurping,
because it's routine...

In routine nothing's magic!

Now a person who talks in front
of the camera for about 5 minutes

or that becomes a character and
therefore there's something magical

or it's no use.

And the magical can be a thing,
the way of saying it, it can be the...

Gestures of the face,
you have so much there...

Magical materialist.

Oh, no, you see, this is a
thing that I am convinced.

Yeah, well, I am,
of course I am, right?

I am in the airplane, I'll be in
sickness and in death? I will.

All the?

And the people...
It is prejudice, imagine.

Unfortunately, I don't believe it, you know?
I'd love to believe it, that's the difference.

I didn't want a sole life,
I wanted 10!

- It's better, huh?
- Ahn?

- It's better.
- What?

- To believe, I think?
- But of course it's better.

But it's better, that's why I say,
the shitty thing in my life is...

What's left of my life

is that I only believe a little in
the movies when I'm making them.

Now, you ask, why do it?" I don't
know what movie I'm going to make now.

I really don't know,
it might be over!

I might do it just
because I have to.

Lately I am going through a moment that I
say "what do I get up in the morning for?"

Why? I have to find something
or I'll kill myself,

I don't wanna kill myself either because I want
to live, but I can't let myself die either.

So, it sucks!

What is the sense in living?

My life, it's not the other,

it's not Mother Teresa, me!

It's always the same movie,
but it's another movie.

Maybe the same film Coutinho
used to see when he was a teenager.

Melodramas.

It's a ritual,

it's theater,

a rare and vague
moment of communion.

All the tenderness

that I have kept
no one in the world

will offer you.

And your hair I'm the
only one that knows

how to caress.

My poor heart,

cannot handle
more illusions,

can no longer
suffer ingratitude.

Now you come
saying goodbye.

What?

And do you know why,
in a way, it's an obsession?

Because I started in the movies
making a movie called ABC of Love"..

It started with a
dance in the suburbs,

this guy is with some
lowlifes, they wanna fuck a girl,

and the guy says
not this girl, she's complicated?

her dad doesn't
let her, whatever.

And this dance was filmed

and was filmed? I can't remember if it was filmed
with the music or if the music was added later

because any song would do.

I don't know that.

And then I found a record. I went to
research, I bought a record that was

"The hits of Jovem Guarda".
It had around 18 songs.

And from those songs
I got 3: "Vai pro Inferno",

that would be banned later,

a song by The Golden Boys,
called "Algu?m na Multid?o

and this one by Wanderl?a,
which I thought it was perfect,

so they dance to these 3 songs,

so I kept this song in my mind.

It's not the song of my life, but I
kept it, I used it in 57 this one...

And I don't know a song by
Wanderl?a except for this one.

Ok, i'll sing it to you.
- Which song is it?

Once you said?

That your love was big.

That no one else is nanana?

That no one else is...

...you from me.
Will take you from me.

Then there is this one part that
I can't sing, but that I can't forget.

Now, you come saying?
goodbye.

What have I done,
for you to treat me this way.

Then, all the tenderness
I gave you?

Then it comes the part of caressing the hair,
the music gets higher and I can't sing.

But now you come saying"...

it's something that
really got really stuck.

Because in the end... In fact,
making the movie had this issue.

I'm not against mass culture.

How can I be against mass culture if I was
educated, by the radio, by the American cinema?

Up to 1945 at least.

So, when Chico spoke, right?
It was Chico.

He brought the issue ten years ago,
the death of the song.

It will never die!

Cinema will die long before,
you bet, the song will not die.

The song in which
you speak.

For two, for the crowd...
For the animal,

or to celebrate, death, life.

And to invent a past, to invent
the future, whatever it may be.

No, that's...

But the core of all this shit here
is in the popular songs.

And Elizabeth sings one?

- Ahn?
- Elizabeth sings one.

She does, she sings a coco.

She sang the coco
in a moment of fear,

which, 20 years later,
when I went to film it

of course I didn't remember anything about the
coco anymore, I remembered... the chorus.

Then I talked to Vladimir, I said
"Vladimir, sing me the coco of 64".

And he sang to me
and I recorded it.

"Look at the coco of sabilo-bilo-bilo,
look at the coco of sabilo-bilo-d?.

Lady why does this boy cry, for the sake
of it, wanting I do not know what..."

And he sang the whole thing,
and I took it there,

I called T?nia Alves
with her daughter.

T?nia went,
practically for free,

and my two children
dubbed it.

Together with T?nia Alves' daughter,
because she is a child, right?

This was dubbed.

Too bad she does
not sing anymore.

After all, anyway.

Politics and so,
but it's a coco.

It's a coco she sang, that Vladimir
probably knew from the region.

Coutinho,
can she come up?

Oh, the focus
is essential.

I'm gonna leave now,
if I'm here she won't...

Look, Jacques, all this beginning,
because she's coming, use a wide shot?

You can sit down.

- It's very?
- I'm breathless.

- The stairs?
- What did you say?

I'm breathless, the stairs,
I came up and up?

But why?
Do you smoke?

No, no.

I dated him for two years
and was married for six.

Why did it happen?

Because I felt I wasn't
bound to the marriage.

I wanted more, I wanted to
study, I started college,

I was interested
in other people,

I mean, I didn't have
my focus on the marriage.

So, I didn't have
my focus on the marriage.

Then I thought it wasn't
gonna be ok, because

both him and I were
very young at the time,

I already had
that feeling, like...

Who owns the voice in a story?

Who owns its own voice?

What if the story of our
lives could be better told

by someone else?

I'm not a professor
at Moscow University.

I'm the Council's secretary,

the council's secretary,
Commander.

I know it's not exactly
what you wanted.

It's not really what
you dreamed of.

So many courses and stuff.

But now?

But the child will be, and it's a
boy, it's a boy, Commander.

I knew it, he was in his mom's
womb and I knew it was a man.

Do you remember that?

It's the only
photo of a professor

that you're gonna
have in life,

at least mine.

Because I'm

the council's shit!

I'm a secretary
for the city council.

Me.

Secretary for
the council.

And every night I still dream of being a
professor at the University of Moscow.

An authority.

The great from Russia!

Actors,

characters.

It's always the same film,

but it's another film.

Doubles,

triples.

All alter egos of Coutinho?

Did you start smoking because
of the movies, Coutinho?

- Because of watching movies, or what?
- No, no.

I started because one day
I got some money back in Paris

then I was told I
had got a scholarship

from the Brazilian Embassy,
I was so badly paid...

There was a scholarship
they gave every semester,

so I was told, I had
tried to smoke with

1-2 years before, but I swallowed all the smoke,
then the cigarette with filter came around.

In France they already had it,
Royale.

That was weaker than Gauloise,
which is very strong.

Then I bought a packet.

I made some money,
then I finished smoking it.

Cigarette is bad,

I still say that
cigarettes are bad,

but then I got addicted,
got used to it...

And it's been exactly
52 years since then.

And I still think
that smoking is bad,

but I already realized that
the problem is the gesture.

Look what is left, I only
smoke less than half of the cigarette.

For me it's the gesture.

And to see the smoke coming out,
in the dark smoking is no fun.

Not to see the smoke.

Blackout, smoking is...
no fun.

I think it has to do with the gesture
and to see some shit coming out here.

And then, 52 years?
I've had emphysema for 20 years.

My doctor said
Oh, keep smoking.

Gonna quit now?

You're gonna quit and gonna die soon".

And then there's no use, the harm done
to the lungs, there's no way back.

But every year I do the exams,
I wanna live.

But quit smoking no...

Fuck.

I don't do anything.

I make some films and smoke.

Let's go to the living room?

- C'mon, C'mon.
- Sit down, huh?

Yeah?
Let's talk.

When we are born, Jesus writes
how long we are going to live,

and the hour
that we are going to die.

- Ever since we are born?
- Yes, sir.

So... you don't care
about death, do you?

- Think about it?
- I'm really scared.

Aren't you, sir?

- Of course I am.
- Hail Mary.

But that's the way.

Right?

In the end, cinema
is a bit about this, right?

To immortalize?
Our ghosts.

Yeah, this thing of the death at work,
the definition from Cocteau.

Cinema est la mort au travail.
It's death at work.

And of course you can have this
in many other subtle ways and all.

'Cause, of course, it's like old movies.
Actors have already died.

Cinema freezes people in time.

But in the documentary itself it's a present,
that turns into past, which is a little

death at work,
you see?

Of everything.

This is our arrival

to the second day of filming
with Elizabeth Teixeira.

It was three days total.

In the first, Abra?o's presence
influenced the vibe of the interview,

specially in
the beginning.

The other days he
didn't show up.

Elizabeth told us
about her life

and Jo?o Pedro's in
these two occasions,

with and without
Abra?o's presence.

In the living room
and in the backyard.

Is Mrs. Elizabeth there?

Come here, Mrs. Elizabeth,
come here just a minute.

Huh?

How's the class?

Class is here, a class of boys.
Hi, how are you, Coutinho?

Hi, everything all right
with you, guys?

Is class good?

Yeah, for now just
a few boys came,

today is the first day,
they will be told who the teacher is,

so today there
are fewer boys.

But do you wanna
get in?

- Huh? Fine.
- C'mon.

So we'll see if the
light is fine, ok?

The light there,
all right.

- How are you getting around town? Is it ok?
- It's all right.

Hey, Coutinho, I went to
bed last night, I was thinking,

oh, the interview I
talked very, very badly,

but I was very
emotional.

To stay with that, and then
he comes, and stays like that.

Because I should have started
right, as you wanted.

From the beginning, right?
How we started dating,

and then we got married, we
went to live in Jaboat?o, right?

Then I had expressed myself better, if you
left for today, I had expressed myself better.

But we came today, we can continue
today. Do you have a backyard here?

Huh? There's a backyard, yeah.
Come in, Coutinho,

come see it inside.

It's always the same film
but it's another film, right?

Yeah, no? that's it.

And the first film is:
Cabra 64"..

- Yeah.
- They were ordinary people

that would perform, or wanted
to perform themselves.

And it was from a person who didn't
know what to do with his life, because

the truth, until 1970,
I kept being a person

who didn't know, because...you know?\c}

People didn't know how to read,
they had to memorize the dialogue,

I improvised the dialogues,
their lines and all.

But, anyway, I was talking
from the outside.

Those characters standing
still, because "how to move?"

They didn't know
how to move.

So there's this game
with that shoot from1964

which is totally the opposite to
what came on in the meeting.

But it had to be!

In 64 I was making a movie
that I didn't know how to make.

- Yeah.
- Got it?

And bound to rules, "I'm going
to tell the life of Jo?o Pedro".

Luckily, because then when
she told about his life,

I happened to have filmed it, my script was so
bad, that it was just like what she had told me.

Bricklayer and shit,
all that, you see?

But the element of performance
is always there, now?

Everyone talks about performance,
it wasn't a premeditated performance.

Yeah, it's the action.

For example, something
that's not a performance.

You see how time, in its
turn, it never is?

First, a chronological editing

it has its advantages.

Her, for example,
she's going to say goodbye,

that she didn't expect I was gonna
go there, Abra?o said, thanks and all,

She makes a reference,
without Abra?o, of the amnesty,

proof that it was a
very strong thing.

So much so that in the letter to her
daughter, sent one year before,

which the daughter reads, she says "thanks to this
amnesty", and the letter is for her daughter.

So, the amnesty was an essential
moment for her to feel free.

But the fact is that she talked about the
amnesty, and so and such, thanks to amnesty.

But she...

She is going to say
goodbye by the car,

she is aware that in a way
she talked about the amnesty,

that she has to take
up a position again,

besides thanking
the amnesty.

And she makes a speech, like she used to.
Radical speeches that she made in 62.

That thing with the arm
and all, see?

She does, almost like an
archive shot from 62.

It's as if she said the car is going
away, the film will end,

but I didn't say? I was ambiguous.
Now I'm not gonna be ambiguous.

It's a performance. It's thought through,
because the character is like that.

The fight can't stop!

While there's hunger

and misery wages,
people have to fight.

Who doesn't fight
for life improvements?

You have to fight.

Those who have good conditions, right, Mr. Neneco?
Whoever has a good life can stay there, right?

I have been suffering,
I have to fight, until today.

I have to say, it's necessary to
change the regime, people must fight,

because as long as you have this little
regime, this "little democracy" there.

- Democracy without freedom?
- Democracy without freedom?

Democracy with misery
wages and hunger?

Democracy with the son of the worker and peasant without
the right to study, without the conditions to study?

Like mine, right,
now I took the,

the boy to enroll and you pay
I don't know how much, right?

One can't,
no one can.

But the important
thing is that

Edgar, who is filming,

he did, and he was right,
it was a cinema shot

he said:
No, reverse gear"..

And then I had to say
goodbye to her like that.

You know?
Not a big hug and all.

I had to
be a bit rude

to make the
final shot,

which is not the final shot,
because I added a death.

And that's essential.

So it could go
without that,

withdrawing the car,
only with the car window,

fade would come in
and the words the end",

that's it, I could go
join the party and shit.

Oh, you leave, finish
and? join the party.

And everyone that talk about
the movie think it's the final scene.

They omit that
there's a death.

That a last memory that was in the film,
from another moment, is gone. Dead.

And it ends
in the cemetery.

Our last shoot with
Jo?o Virginio was in his yard,

in a Carnival
Sunday in 1981.

10 months later,

Jo?o Virg?nio died of a
heart attack at the same place.

He was buried in the
Vit?ria de Santo Ant?o Cemetery,

beside Zez?
of Galileia.

The only thing I do in my life
that makes any sense are the movies.

Even if the cinema is over...
For me...

I have nothing else to do, my life has
already been over for a while...

I have a good emphysema,
78 years...

A very complicated personal life,
a very complicated family life.

Everything's complicated.
Everything.

So... no it's not like that,
oh, because "art", it's not that.

Maybe my life is
so poor that

cinema is rich because of that, not
because "cinema", "art", it's not that.

But it's a thing that...

You can say, it's not that
I live their lives,

it might help to think, there
are other lives, you know?

I think this here
helps me to live.

And that the
films I make

if in some ways
they are the same,

they are pro-life films,
without being...

You know,
without being...

And, at the same time, I hate
the celebration of joy, you know?

Carnival, this thing...
This I hate.

Because life is pain and joy,
otherwise it's unbearable.

And if you don't accept the pain,
there is no life.

That's choosing death.

Just like eternity, it's a...

There is a phrase,
in a film about Lacan,

I do not know what Lacan
is talking about, I'm not interested

to decode it and so...

But it's a documentary, he gave
a lecture in Belgium,

and it's... short, but
it was recorded.

It was filmed.

And he says one sentence,
but that one is absolutely true.

And he repeats it 3 times with the emphasis
of an actor, he was a great actor, right?

He speaks with
emphasis.

If immortality existed,

how would we
bear living?

I mean, we would
not be able to live,

if we were immortal.

That sentence is final,
you see?

When there's that foolishness that man
is gonna be immortal, that's foolish.

We are going to reach 120...

The basis of human
life is this...

And it's tragedy, huh?

That we're born, live and know that we'll
die, tomorrow or in 100 years from now.

It changes...
100 years, so what?

And that phrase, I think it's extraordinary
because he says with an emphasis.

It would be unbearable.

Last words from the play:

Time will pass and we
will leave forever.

They will forget
our faces,

our voice,

they will forget
that we were 3.

But our suffering will become joy
for those who will come after us.

Happiness and peace
will reign on the earth,

and those who live now will be blessed
and remembered with good words.

My dear sisters,

our life is not
over yet.

Let's live,
let's work...

A Treat of Coutinho