Joao Moreira Salles: Santiago

He wrote “The History of the Great Men”, 30.000 pages about the universal aristocracy. He wrote it in his small kitchen and he had all the pages neatly organised on a shelf in his bed room. The great men and women were close to him all the time. 

He was a butler at the Salles home in Rio. An extremely rich family and house, one can see, when the director (younger brother of Walther) takes us back to the place with his rushes from 1992, when he wanted to make a film about Santiago, the character of the film. A brilliant man, full of grace, a man who lived with his encyclopaedia, and for music and for dance. Born in a wrong century, one could say.

13 years later, after the death of Santiago, and 13 years more mature, the director makes the film based on his filming and on his looking into the pages that Santioago had written. He does not hold back in his reflection on his own role at that time, he was the rich man´s kid, who was more interested in camera angles and framing and light, than in the man in front of him, who is toughly directed by the director, shouting from outside the picture. Do this Santiago, do that, not that like that etc. – Santiago likes to perform but you can also see how he fights to obey the young man´s orders. He obeys, he is the butler.

It sounds a bit sad, but it not only like that. Santiago talks about his childhood in Italy with passion and commitment, and he insists on a sequence where his hands are dancing for the camera. Beautiful, as is this film-film (a must in film schools!), a distant portrait of a man of culture.

Grand Prix 2007 at Cinéma du réel, Paris

Joao Moreira Salles: Santiago, 2006, Brazil, 80 mins.

Read an interview with the director: http://pablogoldbarg.blogspot.com/2007/06/tribeca-x-4-joao-moreira-salles.html