Bacurau is a curious case of the film itself being far better than its script. How can this be, you might say? But the truth is that the script has more loose ends than you can count. The female protagonist who hardly figures in the plot. The water crisis that isn’t left just unresolved, but also forgotten. The shallow attempts at characterisation of the mercenaries. Udo Kier’s motivation for turning on his own. And there’s plenty more. However, somehow, in spite of all this, Bacurau more or less triumphs. Firstly because it uses the classic trope of the Western, and turns it on its head, making the gringos the bad guys. Secondly, and above all, because of the portrayal of the small town of Bacurau itself, with its large cast of diverse and engaging characters, its communal events, its resident DJ, its solidarity. The last element is perhaps the most telling. As mentioned, it looks as though Teresa is set up to be the protagonist as she arrives back in the threatened town, but her narrative is never developed. Instead it’s the town itself which emerges as the protagonist, the town which fights back and triumphs over the gringo invaders. The narrative is wafer-thin but a wafer filled with ice cream. There are so many details to enjoy, so many telling moments, and above all such conviction in the acting and the directors’ capacity to capture what the interior of Brazil is really like whilst adhering to a genre format.
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