The tension between following your own heart and obeying your sense of duty to your family has been the fuel to many stories over the centuries, from classics likeWilliam Shakespeare’sRomeo and Julietto, well, classics likeBrad Bird’s andJan Pinkava’sRatatouille. It is, after all, a universal feeling, that odd pull at our heartstrings whenever we are faced with the decision of walking the path that was laid out for us or creating our own place in the world. When the logical conclusion of one of these alternatives is certain death, the story becomes even more captivating, for who among us can claim to resist a good tragedy? In 2001’sBehind the Sun, it is the duty of death itself that threatens the existence and the dreams of the film’s protagonist, Tonho (Rodrigo Santoro), as he meets a woman that offers him a chance at a new life.The result is a somber, but somehow stillhopeful tale about the necessity of breaking senseless cycles.A tale that, complete with its beautiful imagery, courtesy of cinematographerWalter Carvalhoand of the stark contrasts of the Brazilian deserted sertão, more than deserves a watch, even over 20 years after its release.
Behind the Sunis a true testament to the universality of stories surrounding duty and love. The second movie directed by Brazilian filmmakerWalter Sallesafter his Oscar-nominatedCentral Station, it is actually based on an Albanian novel by authorIsmail Kadare. However, whileBroken April’s action takes place in the Eastern European country, Salles takes the story to the Brazilian Northeast in the 1910s. In an impoverished and dry land in which traditional sugar-producing farmers are now facing the competition of steam mills,two families pay blood with blood, murdering child after child to settle a feud that has been going on since time immemorial.
Behind the Sun
When ordered by his father to avenge the death of his older brother, a young man questions the tradition of violence between two rival families.
What Is ‘Behind the Sun’ About?
With a screenplay written by Salles,Karim Aïnouz, andSérgio Machado,Behind the Sunhas at its center the generations-long war between the Breves and the Ferreiras,two families whose sons just go about killing each otherwithout even knowing why. The hatred between them runs deep, but the feud has gained the air of a mundane obligation, with members of each family attending their rivals' funerals and being granted a short truce before their time comes. A black ribbon is also passed among them, mandatorily tied to the upper arm as a sign to whoever comes to take their life. In the world ofBehind the Sun, much like in our regular lives, death is something that you simply cannot escape. You are constantly marked for it. Your only choice is between either living a short life filled with obligations towards your family or a long one, following a path of your own making.
It’s the latter choice that young Pacu (Ravi Ramos Lacerda) hopes his brother Tonho will make after the murder of their eldest sibling, Inácio (Caio Junqueira). A boy of about 10 years old, Pacu is the one whose perspective serves as our entry point to the clash between the Breves and the Ferreira clans. His childish hopes are fed by a version ofThe Little Mermaidthat he tells himself based on the pictures of a book that he is unable to read. His plans for his brother, however, are not off to a good start, asTonho is quick to pick up a gun to claim the life of the man that killed Inácio. But things change when Tonho meets a traveling circus performer by the name of Clara (Flávia Marco Antônio).
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Trapped in her own relationship of duty towards her godfather, Salustiano (Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos), a man who raised her, but who also seems to be somewhat infatuated with her, Clara sees her life on the road as a prison in its own way. Or, at least, that’s how she begins to feel after meeting Tonho.Knowing full well that he is living on borrowed time, she presents him with an opportunity to escape, to go away with her to some other place, free from Salustiano and from the Breves family obligations. Whether Tonho will find it within himself to run away with Clara or whether he will die before he has the chance to truly know love, as foretold by the Ferreira patriarch, is the central tension of the story.
Starring Rodrigo Santoro, best known by American audiences for his roles as Xerxes in300and Hector Escaton inWestworld, plays Tonho brilliantly.Behind the Sunwas nominated for the BAFTA and the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion. It was also Brazil’s choice to represent the country at the 2002 Academy Awards. Alas, the movie was not nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category, now known as Best International Feature Film.
‘Behind the Sun’ Is a Movie About a Fate That Awaits Us All
For Portuguese speakers, the name of the Breves family serves as anice Easter eggand an indication of what the story is about. The word comes from “breve”, meaning something that happens in a short amount of time. Thus, the Breves are doomed to live “vidas breves”, or short lives, as a result of this endless fight that no one seems willing to put a stop to. However,the fate that awaits the Breves is a fate that also awaits all of us. There is, after all, not a single individual in this world that won’t eventually die. But whatBehind the Sunreally cares about is what you do in the time that you’ve got left.
Tonho chooses to live. Not in the sense that his father wants him to live, fixing roofs and sellingrapaduraand working tirelessly at their small mill. No,for Tonho, life becomes all about escaping the small confines of his family’s farmand diving head first into the world – to take his brother to circus performances, spend time and play with him, and, of course, fall in love for the first time. As he runs away from home with Clara and Salustiano, it becomes his brother’s, as well as his mother’s wish that he will never come back, that he will get to live a full life away from all this nonsense. Alas, Tonho does come back. He comes back because he knows that, for as long as he has that ribbon tied to his arm, there is no escaping death.
There are two ways of looking at Tonho’s return. The literal interpretation, which is of extreme importance, considering the themes of the movie, is that he comes back because he still has a sense of duty to his family – a sense of duty that is dissolved when Clara removes the ribbon from his arm and when an unexpected death threatens the whole dynamic between the Breves and the Ferreiras. The philosophical way of looking at his return, however, makes us question our own futile attempts at escaping the passage of time and the natural result of it. Tonho comes back because, just like each and every one of us,he can’t cheat death. It is an obligation that we all have to fulfill, no matter how we have chosen to live our lives.
‘Behind the Sun’ Is Full of Visual Metaphors
This duality between literal and metaphorical interpretations is also present inBehind the Sun’s visuals, gorgeously shot by Carvalho’s keen eye. Though the images can sometimes feel too on the nose,they are nevertheless valuable to our understanding of the main character’s dilemma.Tonho and Pacu are given literal burdens to carry at their farm, and a remark about how the bulls that their father whips into spinning the mill have started to do their routine unprompted does not go unnoticed. Likewise, when Tonho decides to take the road less traveled by, it is literally by taking the road he, Pacu, and their father never take, neither to go to the closest village nor to the Ferreiras house. The sky and the sea represent freedom, and the dry dirt that clings to the skin, much like the fence-like sugar cane plantations, is a sort of prison.
This isn’t exactly bothersome in a movie likeBehind the Sun. Told through the point of view of a child, the film is in many ways a fable, a story about a doomed man that escapes death with the help of a beautiful maiden. Or maybe he does so by himself: that is one thing the movie leaves up for interpretation. Either way, there is a tease of fantasy in the extreme realism of Salles camerawork – a realism that sometimes feels a little off-putting when we consider thatSalles is the son of a famously rich familyfrom the wealthier Southeast, and not a poor man from the Northeast like his characters. It would perhaps have been better to indulge a little more in the abstract and the poetic, but the film works the way it is. And what it leaves us with, no matter if we latch onto the painful death at its end or its hopeful, final scene, is a sense thatwe must break cycles in our lives and truly enjoy it before our time comes.
Behind the Sunis currently available to stream on Hoopla in the U.S.
