The Fever
Maya Da-Rin turns to fiction to realise the story of an indigenous Brazilian security guard who is drawn back to the rainforest.
The Fever marks a development for the Brazilian filmmaker Maya Da-Rin who had previously devoted herself to documentary subjects. It deservedly earned a Best Actor award at Locarno for its leading player Régis Myrupu despite this being his first film and it is appropriate to describe The Fever as a remarkable work even if it is not always a fully satisfying one. Its ambition is striking. Set in the port city of Manaus, the film focuses on a middle-aged man played by Myrupu. This is Justino who belongs to the indigenous Desana people and had travelled to the city some twenty years earlier to find work, first in construction and more recently as a security guard in the docks. This has enabled him to bring up his family and to give them opportunities that they would never have had if he had remained in his rural home: a son, Everton (Johnatan Sodré), has prospered and married and now has children of his own; his daughter, Vanessa (Rosa Peixoto), is acting as a nurse and has ambitions to become a doctor. In the life that Justino has chosen, he has been sustained by having the companionship of his wife, but she has recently died.
As it happens, certain aspects of The Fever evoke thoughts of two directors whose work is very different from what Da-Rin is attempting here - one is Ken Loach and the other is Ozu Yasujiro. We may be in Brazil but the uninspiring work undertaken by Justino and the racial slurs which he suffers from a fellow worker (Lourinelson Wladmir) render this a film which expresses social concern from a working class perspective and that’s very much in keeping with Loach’s cinema. As for the family portrait offered here, at its centre is the fact that Vanessa has won a scholarship to study medicine at the university in Brasilia. Justino feels that he must encourage her to take it up even though this important step towards achieving the career she seeks will take her way and leave him a widower living alone. This is very much the kind of situation found in many films by Ozu and Da-Rin’s piece also shares another feature of his work, the use of actors who make one feel that they are real living people.
However, there is a key factor in The Fever which gives it a character far removed from either Loach or Ozu. The opening scene, a slow track back, concentrates on a shot of a static Justino accompanied by a soundtrack that starts with sounds of nature but leads on to the noise of machinery. Only slowly as the background undergoes striking changes of light are we able to recognise the background as being the docks. The effect of all this is to put us inside Justino’s head and what the film does brilliantly is to make us identify with him and to sense the emptiness of his life. Somewhat later Da-Rin equals the impact of that first scene by finding a quite different way to emphasise the numbing routine of Justino’s job as watchman. She does this by building up shots of cranes and cargo containers so angled as to seem dominating and then adds a shot taken from above in which they dwarf him. There is stylisation here certainly but, thanks to the reliance on natural sounds rather than music on the soundtrack and to a sense of authenticity doubtless aided by Da-Rin’s documentary experience, we feel that we are actually sharing the life of the central character.
On top of this, however, the film offers a bold extra layer. It is present through such things as a dream, a story told by Justino to his grandson and references on television to animals being killed by an unknown creature. Even the fever of the title comes into play in this way since after a while Justino succumbs to a fever but one which has no clear medical explanation. In all these cases they can be read as indirect indications of Justino’s state of mind: he is undergoing a crisis that is beyond his own ability to analyse albeit that we viewers can see the drawbacks of his chosen way of life as a root cause. An older brother who only visits the city occasionally advises a return to the countryside and to the world of his own people but Justino, who is accused of being too committed to the white urban lifestyle, claims that he cannot go back.
Ultimately, the film which has so successfully put us in Justino’s shoes is less adept at reaching some kind of resolution. Although the jungle is close to Manaus, the film has linked the forest with dreams and just how literally we are meant to take the film’s final scenes (one takes place at night in the trees) is an open question. You are left to read these passages for yourself which I regard as less than ideal (is the final scene real or entirely symbolic?). But there is great filmmaking here, a compelling lead actor and huge originality in approaching social concerns through a work that functions on more than one level.
Original title: A Febre.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Régis Myrupu, Rosa Peixoto, Johnatan Sodré, Kaisaro Jussara Brito, Edmildo Vaz Pimental, Anunciata Teles Soares, Lourinelson Wladmir.
Dir Maya Da-Rin, Pro Leonardo Mecchi, Maya Da-Rin and Juliette Lepoutre, Screenplay Maya Da-Rin, Miguel Seabra Lopes and Pedro Cesarino, Ph Bárbara Alvarez, Art Dir Paula Cardoso, Ed Karen Akerman, Costumes Joana Gatis.
Tamanduá Vermelho/Enquadramento Produções/KomplizenFilm/Still Moving-New Wave Films.
98 mins. Brazil/France/Germany. 2019. Rel: 6 August 2021. Cert. 12A.
