Great independent films like Central Station often rely on a few key people doing extraordinary work. Fernanda Montenegro had been one of Brazil’s greatest actresses for many years, but few outside her country ever knew of her ability. That all changed with the honesty and depth she gave to the character of Dora in this film. In Montenegro’s hands, the unhappy and duplicitous Dora was given her full due as a complex human being. One form of truth is to photograph real people, but film cameras and the set up required tend to change the reality for all concerned. Another form of truth is to take on the role of a poet and translate the heart of something with perfect phrasing. That is what Montenegro did here. Her willingness to dissolve into the character and her ability to show this on screen without personal embellishment is beyond the capability of almost all performers. Her generosity made this film work.
Walter Salles, the Brazilian director of this film, takes an intellectual approach to the history and dynamics of cinema. He singles out the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami as a major influence on his style, because of the way Kiarostami’s used real locations and individuals to affect the performances. There are several examples in this film, such as a large staged religious festival and some of the poor requesting letters where the realness of it encouraged a spontaneous response from the participants that took the scenes in unexpected directions. The staged festival became real, and the letter requests became sincere personal expressions. As with Kiarostami, these heartfelt reactions transform the film from a constructed narrative to something very human and eternal.
Brazil had a strong tradition of gritty narratives about the poor called Cinema Novo that sought to make the public aware of its misery with “sad, ugly…desperate films” as Glauber Rocha, one of its premier directors, described it. There is some of that in this film as well. Produced by Arther Cohn, who had worked with the great Italian Neorealist director de Sica, Central Station also has a more hopeful form of humanistic expression. Walter Salles highlighted a quote from Rossellini, another Italian Neorealist, who said, “What I want to show is that the world is full of friends.” Salles continued: “sometimes when I see the violence, this trivialization of violence in cinema today, I have the impression that the sentence could be inverted to ‘What I want to show is that the world is full of enemies’” His goal with this film is to document the way people can look beyond the hopelessness of an existence and find the strength and faith to solve their own problems.
Faith and lack of faith has a huge role in this film and in the life of many of the non-actors shown, because many have almost no resources to rely on. The area of Brazil described has huge wastelands of government housing with no public planning to support them. The central station in the title is a Darwinian nightmare where only the strong can survive. Dora and the young Josué have lost everything that once had value. Josué’s faith in a long absent Father, the faith of those requesting letters that someone wants to hear what they have to say, and the many variations of religious faith carry a universal message to many members of the audience. Salles, with his dedication to the reality behind his artifice and respect for the people he observes, takes this film beyond sentiment to one of the grandest human statements ever filmed.