‘Conversa Acabada’ loosely translated as the title
suggests is a conversation at an end, a conversation between the two greats of
Portuguese contemporary writing, Fernando Pessoa and Mário de Sá-Carneiro.
But why call it ‘Conversa Acabada’? Is it because
Sá-Carneiro commits suicide and Pessoa wastes away his life in drink?
Or is it because these two poets could never really
accomplish their dreams?
A
conversation that is anything but ‘finished'-
Early twentieth century, a time of tremendous social and political
upheaval in Portugal, everything so fluid, the political scenario very
disorganized. Portugal is in the midst of an intense political as well as moral
crisis. On one hand a very confused ‘Republica’ battling with the dregs of a
Monarchy rotten to its core.
Contemporary Portuguese Cinema
has frequently explored these turbulent times. In this intense political
scenario, the two greats, Fernando Pessoa and Mario de Sa-Carneiro, battle to
grip the language, to lift it from the abyss it had fallen, seeking to
re-invent the language of modern poetry.
They embark on
this adventure with grave repercussions to their own selves.
Fernando Pessoa fragments into a myriad of heteronyms,
alter egos who wrote poetry in styles quite distinct from his own, just a
prolongation of his personal despair.
Sa-Carneiro, the more tragic of the two departs to a
voluntary exile in Paris, macerating his body with drugs and liquor, all the
while writing a series of unsettling experimental novels, sinking into despair,
destroying his very existence in his poems and novels.
Together, they founded the magazine, ‘Orfeu’ which
openly defied the government censorship and the traditional standards of a
deeply conservative society. Forced to stop its publication, the two retreat
further into their own private realms of despair, alcoholism and death. Orfeu,
not only had these two great writers but also other stellar personalities such
as Almada Negreiros, Santa-Rita Pintor, Ângelo de Lima. Orfeu resuscitated in
the dormant consciences of the people a blazing fire, for something different,
for something more contemporary.
From 1912 until 1916, the
year of Sá-Carneiro’s death, the relationship between the two is considered to
be one of the most powerful friendships in the literary world of Portuguese
Literature. ‘Conversa Acabada’ seeks
to grasp the story of their encounter, their letters, their friendship, their often silent encounters and their death.
The
film is not a biopic. It is a film that considers the written Word as much more
powerful than the image, the poetry of two poets is what should take over and
subjugate the image. In this sense, the film delves deeper into the
relationship of the two poets.
The death of Fernando Pessoa in
extreme Loneliness of a hospital room. The death of Sá-Carneiro in extreme loneliness
in a hotel room in Paris;who comes first and who after is irrelevant.
More than a biography, this film
is a poem of two people, two lives written by Fernando Pessoa and Mario de Sá
Carneiro. Who started it and who ends it is hardly important
Letter
to Mário de Sá-Carneiro from Fernando Pessoa
Written on 14th March 1916
I’m writing to you today out of sentimental necessity
— I have an anguished, painful need to speak to you. It’s easy to see that I
have nothing to tell you.
Just this, I
find myself today at the bottom of a bottomless depression. The absurdity of
the sentence speaks for me.
I’m
having one of those days in which
I never had a future. There is only a present, fixed and surrounded by a
wall of anguish. The other bank of the river, because it is the other bank, is
never the bank we are standing on, that is the intimate reason for all my
suffering. There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes
where life is not painful, nor is there any port of call where it is possible
to forget. All of this happened a long time ago, but my sadness began even
before then.
On days of the soul
like today, I feel, with all the awareness in my body, that I am a sad child
abused by life. I was abandoned in a corner where I could hear other children
playing. I feel in my hands the broken toy I was given out of malicious irony.
Today, March 14, at 9:10 P.M., my life knows just how much all that is
worth.
In the garden I can
just make out through the silent windows of my cell, that someone has thrown
all the swings over the branches they hang from; they’re tangled up, high and
out of reach. The result is even the idea that I have in my imagination of
myself running away cannot have swings to play with.
And that is, more or
less, but without style, the state of my soul at this time. Like the woman who
waits in “The Sailor,” my eyes burn from having thought about weeping. Life
pains me bit by bit, in sips, through interstices. All this is printed in very
small type in a book whose binding is already coming apart.
If I weren’t writing
to you, I would have to swear to you that this letter is sincere and that the
hysterically linked things in it spring spontaneously from what I feel. But you
must sense that this tragedy which cannot be staged is of a rigorous reality —
full of the here and now — and taking place in my soul just like the green on
the leaves.
It was for that reason
the Prince did not rule. This sentence is entirely absurd. But in this moment I
feel it’s the absurd sentences that really make me want to cry.
If I don’t mail this
letter today, it may be that when I reread it tomorrow, I’ll make a typescript
of it, so I can insert sentences and expressions from it into The Book of Disquiet. But that would
not deprive it of any of the sincerity with which I’m writing it, nor the
dolorous inevitability with which I feel it.
This is the latest
news. So is our being at war with Germany, but even before that, pain made me
suffer. From the other side of Life, all this must seem like the caption for
some caricature.
This is not exactly
madness, but madness must bestow a relaxation on the person who suffers it, the
astute pleasure of the soul’s bounces, not very different from these.
What color can feelings
be?
Thousands of hugs from
yours truly, always truly yours,
Fernando Pessoa
Letter from Sá-Carneiro
to Pessoa
Meu querido Amigo,
A menos de um milagre na próxima segunda-feira, 3 (ou mesmo na véspera), o seu
Mário de
Sá-Carneiro tomará uma forte dose de estricnina e desaparecerá deste mundo. É
assim tal e
qual – mas custa-me tanto a escrever esta carta pelo ridículo que sempre
encontrei nas «cartas
de despedida»... Não vale a pena lastimar-me, meu querido Fernando: afinal
tenho o que quero:
o que tanto sempre quis – e eu, em verdade, já não fazia nada por aqui... Já
dera o que tinha
a dar. Eu não me mato por coisa nenhuma: eu mato-me porque me coloquei pelas
circunstâncias –
ou melhor: fui colocado por elas, numa áurea temeridade – numa situação para a
qual, a
meus olhos, não há outra saída. Antes assim. É a única maneira de fazer o que
devo fazer. Vivo
há quinze dias uma vida como sempre sonhei: tive tudo durante eles: realizada a
parte
sexual, enfim, da minha obra – vivido o histerismo do seu ópio, as luas
zebradas, os
mosqueiros roxos da sua Ilusão. Podia ser feliz mais tempo, tudo me corre,
psicologicamente,
às mil maravilhas, mas não tenho dinheiro..
Conversa Acabada
Director: João
Botelho
Biography
João Botelho, born in 1949 is the
notable Portuguese filmmaker whose films seek to transform the physical into
the metaphysical and to turn ideas and poetry into something tangible. His work
has a creative approach that is almost more poetic than cinematographic.
Botelho develops the front projection techniques,
creating a haunting, make-believe world which his characters seem to inhabit
and from which they simultaneously stand apart.
Here we look at his debut feature film.
Main Actors:
Fernando Cabral Martins (Fernando Pessoa)
André Gomes (Mário de Sá-Carneiro).
If you know or
remember some of Pessoa’s poetry, you would have realized immediately that when
Pessoa approaches a chest of drawers, murmuring softly as he writes without
pausing, that it was his heteronym Alberto Caeiro and not Fernando Pessoa
writing his famous “O Guardador de Rebanhos”.
Eu nunca guardei rebanhos,
Mas é como se os guardasse.
Minha alma é como um pastor,
Conhece o vento e o sol
E anda pela mão das Estações
A seguir e a olhar.
Together with Caeiro, you could whisper softly under
your breath;
Vem sentar-te comigo Lídia, à beira do rio.
Sossegadamente fitemos o seu curso e aprendamos
Que a vida passa, e não estamos de mãos enlaçadas.
(Enlacemos as mãos.)
Sadly you must have wondered is Life but a dream
Or you could scream in delight, ‘Ode Triunfal’ with
Alvaro Campos and type with him the final zzzzzzzzzz with gusto.
Eia! eia! eia!
Eia electricidade, nervos doentes da Matéria!
Eia telegrafia-sem-fios, simpatia metálica do
Inconsciente!
Hup-lá, hup-lá, hup-lá-hô, hup-lá!
Hé-la! He-hô! H-o-o-o-o!
Z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z!
With a certain tone of sarcasm, you could recite
Feminina together with Mario de Sa-Carneiro.
A beautiful woman in the background getting ready to
move out of the room.
Eu queria ser mulher pra me poder estender
Ao lado dos meus amigos, nas banquettes dos cafés.
Eu queria ser mulher para poder estender
Pó de arroz pelo meu rosto, diante de todos, nos
cafés.
The poems were all there for you to listen to, to
savour, to recite, to feel them dripping into your very own soul, whilst you
merged with the great writers themselves.
It was all there for you on a platter if you only
chose to listen.
And the backdrop? What was it all about? The ever
changing backdrop was mysterious. What did this fluid, changing background want
to convey to us?
These were scenes from the lives of Pessoa and
Sa-Carneiro.
The narrator of course, João Botelho, the Director
himself.
The most interesting part of the film however is the
great amizade- the friendship, between the two greats of Portuguese Literature,
Fernando Pessoa and Mario de Sa-Carneiro.
Pssssst some inside dope, the spectacles worn by
Fernando Cabral Martins (Pessoa) were those worn by the great Fernando Pessoa
himself.
Somewhere in the background could be seen the magazine
Blast, inspiration for the heteronyms.
In addition the technique of Syberberg was utilised;
this consists in the frontal projection of images onto a screen so you can see
photos by Jorge Molder, whose work is full of mystery that is enchanting, his
subject is very often he himself, his face, his hands.
Paintings by Carlos Ferreiro and the magnificent
scenography by Ana Jotta
When screened at Cannes, in 1981, a great part of the
audience left the auditorium but a huge part of the audience applauded for
around ten minutes.
What would have been your reaction?
http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/film/FN3899
Some inputs from
Richard Pena, the Film Centre
