Bacurau (2019) Review: A Weird Western That Bites Back

Is Bacurau worth watching?

Yes. Bacurau is one of the most original genre films of its decade, a sun-baked siege western that channels real political anger into something strange, funny and frightening. Kleber Mendonça Filho and co-director Juliano Dornelles build a whole community before they let violence into it, which makes the eventual confrontation feel earned rather than gratuitous. The reservations are a patient first hour that some viewers will find opaque, and villains drawn so broadly that the satire occasionally flattens into caricature.

What is Bacurau about?

Bacurau is set “a few years from now” in a tiny village in the dry backcountry of north-eastern Brazil. It opens with Teresa (Barbara Colen) returning home for the funeral of the village’s elderly matriarch, and the film spends its early stretch simply living among the townspeople: the hard-drinking doctor Domingas (Sônia Braga), the schoolteacher, the musicians, the families who ration water because the local supply has been cut off.

Then things start to go wrong in quiet, unsettling ways. The village disappears from online maps, a local politician’s visits bring contempt dressed up as charity, and a group of well-armed foreigners, led by a cool, sinister figure played by Udo Kier, arrives in the area with a plan. The people of Bacurau have to decide how to defend themselves.

The film is a Brazilian production in Portuguese, with some English, and it runs 131 minutes. It won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

A community portrait that turns into a siege

The film’s smartest choice is its structure. For a long time it plays almost like an ethnographic drama, attentive to funerals, gossip, schoolrooms and local rituals, and it is easy to wonder what kind of film it is. That patience pays off. By the time the threat becomes clear, the audience knows the village well enough to feel every intrusion as a violation.

Mendonça Filho and Dornelles borrow freely from westerns and from the siege thrillers of John Carpenter: widescreen landscapes, split diopter shots, slow zooms and an eerie electronic mood. The result feels less like pastiche than a genre re-imagined from the point of view of people who are usually background extras in such films.

Anger with a sense of humour

Bacurau is a furious film about who gets treated as disposable, and its targets are clear: corrupt local power, outside interests that see poor rural communities as expendable, and the colonial attitudes that link the two. Yet it is often very funny, especially in the petty squabbles among the invaders and the villagers’ dry refusal to be intimidated.

Sônia Braga is superb as Domingas, a volatile and deeply human presence who can be embarrassing one minute and heroic the next. Barbara Colen gives the story a watchful centre, and Udo Kier, cast almost as a living embodiment of genre menace, is chillingly calm.

Where the satire gets blunt

The film’s weakness is that its antagonists are cartoons compared with the villagers. The foreign characters are written as a gallery of grotesques, which makes their scenes blunt next to the texture of life in Bacurau. The slow opening, while rewarding, will test viewers who come in expecting the action thriller its reputation suggests, and the switch to explicit violence is abrupt by design.

Who should watch Bacurau?

It is best for viewers who enjoy genre films with a political edge, admirers of westerns and siege thrillers, and anyone interested in contemporary Brazilian cinema. Allow a little over two hours and be patient with the first half. The violence is sudden and graphic, and there is nudity and strong language, so it is strictly for adults.

For a double bill:

• The Secret Agent, a later Mendonça Filho film that again uses genre to reckon with Brazil’s history.
• Elite Squad, a much more conventional Brazilian action film with its own raw anger at institutional violence.

The verdict

Bacurau is a singular film, a political revenge fable that looks like a western, moves like a slow-burn thriller and lands like a warning. Its villains are too thin and its opening too oblique for some tastes, but its confidence, craft and fury make it a genre film worth seeking out.

Rating: 4/5