Exile and diaspora in the fictional film characters of Paulo Martins (Terra em transe) and Paco (Terra estrangeira)

Abstract

The study is based on aspects attributed to the make-up of the characters of Paulo Martins, in the film Terra em transe [Entranced earth; Anguished land] (Glauber Rocha, 1967), and Paco, in the film Terra estrangeira [Foreign land] (Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas, 1996), with respect to the dimensions of identity, politics and of context (narrative time and space) experienced by these personages in the internal society of these films vis a vis the cultural and identity dimensions, as well as the politics and context in which these films were produced. This is not a study of the psychological profile of the personages, but a reflection on what, and under what circumstances, caused them assume specific attitudes, faced with the impasse of their situation; and how these attitudes, although related to distinct historical situations, are fictional constructions that bind the identity process to a reflection of the sense of place. My argument is informed by a passage from a text of the critic Pablo Emilio Salles Gomes, on the cinematographic personage, where he says: “Basically the art of personages and situations is how they project in time”. And, I would add: in space. In this text, Gomes initiates a discussion of the problem of autonomy in cinema, which is under debate that has historically opposed formalists and realists. In spite of the allegories about a place of origin, as well as the bitter situation experienced as a result of political defeat in the fictional stories of these films, they are both based on mimetic referents which coincide in terms of the filmatic structure, but are different in terms of the political possibilities encountered by their characters in the face of having to make a decision. To the point that Pablo Martins returns to face the defense of a national political project while Paco goes into exile, on a journey, without any political projects and without a sense of place. With the possibility of being confined to an internal exile, Pablo Martins sets out on a suicidal road of confrontation; in contrast, Paco goes for external exile, and is set adrift, for absolute lack of material and emotional conditions to stay in one place, towards an existence governed by signs of instability and death, in search of his ancestral origins. In the one situation, the personage is compelled to confrontation; in the other, to escape.