The past week I have seen three films of Hector Babenco, an Argentinian-born Brazilian film director. He is noted for his socially conscientious films that center on the people who live on the fringe of established society. In 1985 he made Kiss of the Spider Woman, an excellent film about two roommates in a South American prison. A year or two later he made Ironweed after the book of William Kennedy about two homeless tramps in Albany, New York in the years of the economic depression of the Thirties. Ironweed is an almost forgotten film, much too low rated, a film that once will get the place it deserves. Ironweed hurts because it is so unrelentingly bleak. In 2003 he made Carandiru about Brazil’s largest prison in Sao Paulo with a population of 8000 inmates, twice its maximum.

What these films have in common is that they show very bleak, desperate, hopeless environments in which moments of humanity and human warmth flicker. Even if things never change for the good, there is space to have precious human experiences, to bring moments of love, care and authenticity to one another, to reflect on what it is to be truly human. This seems to me an important exploration that Babenco brings to us through his films.

Another film that connected with this theme and has struck me and stayed with me is Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki’s 1990 film The Match Factory Girl. If there is any film that drives home that one cannot live without any flickering of hope, love and humanity, then it is this one. Kaurismäki makes clear that within the decently prosperous Finnish society one can be worse off than in the Sao Paulo prison or among the homeless. This minimal film deserves seeing it and reflecting on it!

Rinus, Feb 2017

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