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Dora is initially reluctant to be responsible for the boy, but eventually decides to take a trip with him to [[Northeast Region, Brazil|Northeast Brazil]] in order to find his father.
Dora is initially reluctant to be responsible for the boy, but eventually decides to take a trip with him to [[Northeast Region, Brazil|Northeast Brazil]] in order to find his father.


Dora tries to leave Josué on the bus, but he follows her, forgetting his backpack containing Dora's money. Penniless, they are picked up by a kind, evangelical truck driver who abandons them when Dora encourages him to drink beer and then grows too friendly. Dora trades her watch for a ride to "Bom Jesus do Norte" (a fictionalized version of Cruzeiro do Nordeste, a district of [[Sertânia]], [[Pernambuco]]), They find his father's address in Bom Jesus, but the current residents say he won a house in the lottery and now lives in the new settlements. With no money, Josué saves them from destitution by suggesting Dora write letters for the pilgrims who have arrived in Bom Jesus for a massive pilgrimage.
Dora tries to leave Josué on the bus, but he follows her, forgetting his backpack containing Dora's money. Penniless, they are picked up by a kind, evangelical truck driver who abandons them when Dora encourages him to drink beer and then grows too friendly. Dora trades her watch for a ride to "Bom Jesus do Norte" (a fictionalized version of Cruzeiro do Nordeste,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://oreversodomundo.com/2016/07/26/central-brasil/|title=Central do Brasil}}; {{cite web|url=http://romanitas.uprrp.edu/vol_5_num_1/mitchell.html|title=Pater / Patria: Central Station and the Search for Identity in Post-Collor Brazil}}</ref> a district of [[Sertânia]], [[Pernambuco]]), They find his father's address in Bom Jesus, but the current residents say he won a house in the lottery and now lives in the new settlements. With no money, Josué saves them from destitution by suggesting Dora write letters for the pilgrims who have arrived in Bom Jesus for a massive pilgrimage.


They take the bus to the settlements, but when they locate the address they have for Josué's father, they are told by the new residents that he no longer lives there and has disappeared. Josué tells Dora that he will wait for him, but Dora invites him to live with her. She calls Irene in Rio and asks her to sell her refrigerator, sofa and television. She says that she will call when she gets settled somewhere. After she hangs up, she learns there are no buses leaving until the next morning.
They take the bus to the settlements, but when they locate the address they have for Josué's father, they are told by the new residents that he no longer lives there and has disappeared. Josué tells Dora that he will wait for him, but Dora invites him to live with her. She calls Irene in Rio and asks her to sell her refrigerator, sofa and television. She says that she will call when she gets settled somewhere. After she hangs up, she learns there are no buses leaving until the next morning.

Revision as of 01:16, 22 November 2021

Central Station
Theatrical release poster
Directed byWalter Salles
Screenplay by
Story byWalter Salles
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyWalter Carvalho
Edited byFelipe Lacerda
Music by
Distributed byEuropa Filmes
Release dates
  • 16 January 1998 (1998-01-16) (Switzerland)
  • 3 April 1998 (1998-04-03) (Brazil)
Running time
113 minutes
Countries
  • Brazil
  • France
LanguagePortuguese
Budget$2.9 million[1]
Box office$22 million[2]

Central Station (Portuguese: Central do Brasil) is a 1998 Brazilian–French drama film directed by Walter Salles, starring Fernanda Montenegro and Vinícius de Oliveira. The screenplay, adapted by João Emanuel Carneiro and Marcos Bernstein from a story by its director Walter Salles, tells the story of a young boy's friendship with a jaded middle-aged woman. Montenegro's performance earned her international critical acclaim and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress, while the film got a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.[3]

Plot

Estação Central do Brasil, the most famous and important railway station in Brazil. Also served as the setting and title of the famous film.

Dora is a retired schoolteacher who works at Rio de Janeiro's Central Station writing letters for illiterate customers for living. Embittered by life, she usually shows a lack of patience with customers and sometimes does not mail the letters that she writes, putting them in a drawer or even tearing them up instead. One of her customers is the mother of Josué, a poor 9-year-old boy who hopes to meet his unknown father someday. When she is killed in a bus accident just outside the train station and Josué is left homeless, Dora is forced to take him in; she initially traffics him to a corrupt couple, but later steals him back out of guilt.

Dora is initially reluctant to be responsible for the boy, but eventually decides to take a trip with him to Northeast Brazil in order to find his father.

Dora tries to leave Josué on the bus, but he follows her, forgetting his backpack containing Dora's money. Penniless, they are picked up by a kind, evangelical truck driver who abandons them when Dora encourages him to drink beer and then grows too friendly. Dora trades her watch for a ride to "Bom Jesus do Norte" (a fictionalized version of Cruzeiro do Nordeste,[4] a district of Sertânia, Pernambuco), They find his father's address in Bom Jesus, but the current residents say he won a house in the lottery and now lives in the new settlements. With no money, Josué saves them from destitution by suggesting Dora write letters for the pilgrims who have arrived in Bom Jesus for a massive pilgrimage.

They take the bus to the settlements, but when they locate the address they have for Josué's father, they are told by the new residents that he no longer lives there and has disappeared. Josué tells Dora that he will wait for him, but Dora invites him to live with her. She calls Irene in Rio and asks her to sell her refrigerator, sofa and television. She says that she will call when she gets settled somewhere. After she hangs up, she learns there are no buses leaving until the next morning.

Isaías, one of Josué's half-brothers, is working on a roof next to the bus stop and learns that they are looking for his father, insisting Dora and Josué come to dinner. They return to his house and meet Moisés, Josué's other half-brother. Later, Isaías explains to Dora that their father married Ana, who he doesn't know is Josué's mother, after their mother died, and that nine years ago, while pregnant, Ana left him to live in Rio and never returned. Isaías asks Dora to read a letter that his father wrote to Ana when he disappeared, six months ago, in case she returned. In the letter, the boys' father explains that he has gone to Rio to find Ana and the son he never met. He promises to return, asks her to wait for him, and says they can all be together—himself, Ana, Isaías and Moisés. Dora pauses, looks at Josué and says, "and Josué, whom I can't wait to meet." Isaías and Josué are sure their father will return, but Moisés does not believe it.

The next morning, while they sleep, Dora sneaks out to catch the bus to Rio. She first leaves behind the letter from Jesus and the one from Ana - the one Dora carried with her from the Central Station but never mailed, expressing Ana's wish for the family to be reunited. Josué wakes up too late to prevent her departure. Dora writes a letter to Josué on the bus. Both are left with the photos they had taken to remember one another.

Production

Being a co-production between Brazil and France, the film was chosen by the French Ministry of Culture to receive resources of Fonds Sud Cinema, for their funding.[5]

Cast

Release

Central Station was first shown in a regional film festival in Switzerland on January 16, 1998 and on January 19 was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in the United States. On February 14, 1998, it was shown at the Berlin Film Festival.

The film was released in Brazil on April 3, 1998 on 36 screens.[2]

Reception

The film received critical acclaim. The film was an NYT Critics' Pick: according to Janet Maslin, "Mr. Salles directs simply and watchfully, with an eye that seems to penetrate all the characters"; the film features a "bravura performance by the Brazilian actress Fernanda Montenegro."[6] According to Richard Schickel, the film is "an odyssey of simple problems, simple emotional discoveries, [and] a relationship full of knots that Salles permits to unwind in an unforced, unsentimental fashion. His imagery, like his storytelling, is clear, often unaffectedly lovely, and quietly, powerfully haunting.[7] Entertainment Weekly gave the film a grade of A–, concluding "In outline, Central Station recalls many of the bogusly sticky adult-kid bonding tales that have been the bane of foreign cinema for too long, but Salles, like De Sica and Renoir, displays a pure and unpatronizing feel for the poetry of broken lives. His movie is really about that most everyday of miracles: the rebirth of hope." [8]

The film is ranked No. 57 in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010.[9]

Box office

The film grossed R$7.7 million (U$4.3 million) from 1.6 million admissions in Brazil, the highest-grossing Brazilian film released during the year.[2][10]

It was the highest-grossing Brazilian film in the United States with a gross of $6.5 million,[2][11] surpassing the $3 million earned by the 1976 film Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands.[12] It was surpassed by the 2002 film City of God which grossed $7.5 million.[13]

It grossed US$11.7 million in the rest of the world for a worldwide total of US$22,462,500.[2]

Accolades

Year Awards Category Nominee(s) Result
1999 71st Academy Awards Best Actress Fernanda Montenegro Nominated
Best Foreign Language Film Central Station Nominated
56th Golden Globe Awards Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama Fernanda Montenegro Nominated
Best Foreign Language Film Central Station Won
14th Independent Spirit Awards Best Foreign Language Film Central Station Nominated
52nd British Academy Film Awards Best Film Not in the English Language Central Station Won
24th César Awards Best Foreign Film Central Station Nominated
São Paulo Association of Art Critics Best Film Central Station Won
Best Director Walter Salles Won
Best Actress Fernanda Montenegro Won
1998 Golden Satellite Awards Best Foreign Language Film Central Station Won
Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama Fernanda Montenegro Nominated
Best Original Screenplay João Emanuel Carneiro and Marcos Bernstein Nominated
48th Berlin International Film Festival Golden Bear Central Station Won
Silver Bear for Best Actress Fernanda Montenegro Won
National Board of Review Best Actress Fernanda Montenegro Won
Best Foreign Language Film Central Station Won
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Best Actress Fernanda Montenegro Won
New York Film Critics Circle Best Actress Fernanda Montenegro 2nd Place
Havana Film Festival Best Film Central Station Won
Best Actress Fernanda Montenegro Won
Association of Film Critics Spain Best Foreign Language Film Central Station Won
Association of Film Critics in Poland Best Foreign Language Film Central Station Won
National Association of Italian Critic Best Foreign Language Film Central Station Won
Sundance Film Festival Best Screenplay João Emanuel Carneiro and Marcos Bernstein Won
San Sebastián International Film Festival Audience Award Central Station Won
Association of Film Critics of Rio de Janeiro Film of the Year Central Station Won

See also

References

  1. ^ "Central do Brasil (1998) - Financial Information". The-numbers.com. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  2. ^ a b c d e "A comercialização de um filme internacional: Central do Brasil". Asaeca.org (in Portuguese). Archived from the original on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  3. ^ "The 71st Academy Awards (1999) Nominees and Winners". Oscars.org. Retrieved 20 October 2015.
  4. ^ "Central do Brasil".; "Pater / Patria: Central Station and the Search for Identity in Post-Collor Brazil".
  5. ^ "Cinemateca Nacional: Central do Brasil (1998)". Cinemateca Brasileira. Archived from the original on 9 February 2015. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  6. ^ Maslin, Janet (20 November 1998). "A Journey of Hope and Self-Discovery for Two Hard-Bitten Souls". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 September 2011.
  7. ^ Schickel, Richard (14 December 1998). "Central Station". Time.com. Archived from the original on 7 March 2008. Retrieved 23 September 2011.
  8. ^ Gleiberman, Owen (27 November 1998). "Central Station". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 23 September 2011.
  9. ^ "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema | 57. Central Station". Empire.
  10. ^ Peter Cowie, ed. (1999). The Variety Almanac 1999. Boxtree Ltd. p. 49. ISBN 0-7522-2454-9.
  11. ^ Central Station at Box Office Mojo
  12. ^ "Pix from afar: National bests in the U.S.". Variety. 7 January 1991. p. 86.
  13. ^ City of God at Box Office Mojo
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