Not since Alejandro Jodorowsky made El Topo in 1970 has there been a western film as beautifully deranged as Bacurau, the incredibly audacious collaboration between Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, who work together to evoke the spirit of the dormant acid westerns that never fully manifested as a feasible area of filmmaking in their infancy, but became quite remarkable as cult classics as time went on, which is clearly where Bacurau is heading, and intentionally so. Whatever it was the directors were hoping to achieve with this film isn’t clear, but its quite clear that it came from a place of profound creativity, purely because they managed to create something that becomes entirely memorable through stark imagery, a darkly comical premise that feels both otherworldly and unimpeachably recognizable, and a general approach to the medium that disregards the rules of the game and instead presents us with a highly original work that may not always function in the way it was supposed to, but makes such an incredible impression, we tend to overlook the more troubling flaws in favour of surrendering to the bizarre mysticism of this incredibly offbeat work. Bacurau is a film that may tend to fall victim to the crushing weight of its own audacity – but this is precisely where I’d suspect the genius lies, since the experience of watching it today may be thrilling, but entirely polarizing in the way that we know we’re witnessing something so undeniably ahead of its time, revisiting it in a decade will produce unexpectedly fruitful results since Mendonça Filho and Dornelles so cleverly curate their ambitions to form something that may not be particularly logical in a traditional sense, but which lingers with the viewer in a way that the vast majority of films do not. In short, Bacurau is a perplexing film, but truly unforgettable at the exact same time.

Bacurau is a film that thrives on the element of surprise – we never know where we stand with this film, which could be seen as a negative trait until we realize its the result of the collaboration between two profoundly talented artists (one a renegade master of contemporary Brazilian cinema, the other a gifted production designer helming his first major production), who amalgamate their vision to produce something quite disconcerting in its execution, but undercut with a scathing message that resonates further than the confines of the film would lead you to believe at first. Inarguably, like Mendonça Filho’s previous two films, a working knowledge of contemporary Brazilian socio-cultural issues is helpful, but not essential. Instead, what is certainly important is that the viewer has the ability to suspend disbelief enough to fully commit to the treacherous narrative territory that Bacurau is going to lead us through. We don’t know where we’re going but from the first haunting frames of this film – where a van drives down a rural road and crashes into sporadically scattered coffins – that it’s going to be something quite worthwhile, even if it takes some time for the audience to fully acclimate to what the directors are attempting to convey, and become comfortable with the vaguely deranged perspective they’re offering. Bacurau is one of those cinematic odysseys that doesn’t fully establish a clear direction from the outset but rather functions as a slow-burning thriller, with bundles of dark comedy and vividly-executed violence, converging in a singularly unique experience. One of its most distinctive traits is how the film blends so many different genres, working through a number of conventions from a wide set of artistic ancestors, harbouring that enviable quality of many of the more fascinating genre-based films of recent years, whereby part of the brilliance is its inability to be pinned down to a particular set of guidelines.

Its certainly not untrue that Bacurau may be a bewildering experience, one that alienates more viewers than it does captivate – this is essentially part of the charm, and we can easily see where its intentions lie through looking just below the surface. On a purely narrative level, Mendonça Filho and Dornelles were working from an impressive set of ideas, which they weave together with their audacious storyline borne from a combination of abstract artistry and more grounded social and political theory, which all come together to form what is undeniably one of the strangest westerns of the past few decades, an unclassifiable work that flourishes in its ambiguity. Ultimately, the best approach to ease us into discussing Bacurau‘s unique sense of abstraction comes when we look at how the directors carefully examine the western trope – the genre may have gone out of style, but it has been omnipotent, usually through the work of revisionist westerns and more subversive texts that take the formerly popular genre and reinvents it. Ultimately, Bacurau seems to be the bastardized child of Sam Peckinpah and Werner Herzog, a South American-set film that combines extreme violence and darkly comical social commentary to make a statement, while still finding the stylish nuances of an extraordinarily gritty subject. Mendonça Filho and Dornelles negotiate the conventions of the western in a very creative way, finding the value in twisting tropes and not falling victim to the same predictable nature that ultimately saw the genre fall from its peak around half a century ago. They meticulously infuse a kind of demented surrealism into Bacurau, taking the inherent absurdity of its premise and stripping it of the more sardonic elements, and instead presents us with a harrowing, strange piece that doesn’t resort to the mindless flailing of an offbeat narrative, but rather elegantly composes a nightmarish landscape that feels detached from reality, yet so oddly connected to it at the same time, a rare but fascinating phenomenon that seems very much on-brand for a film such as this, which distorts reality in a very unique and unforgettable way.

The key to understanding Bacurau isn’t found in the story, but rather in the characters we are introduced to throughout the course of the film. Mendonça Filho and Dornelles do exceptionally well in casting a strong ensemble that doesn’t have any definitive lead, but rather a selection of performers – most of them unknown or amateur local actors, with a few more notable stars – to bring this story to life. However, this doesn’t mean that we can necessarily find all the answers we’re seeking through understanding these characters – in fact, the general atmosphere is that they represent something that isn’t extremely clear at the outset, but rather need to be decoded based on the viewer’s own individual interpretation. In this regard, the directors create a cast of fascinating figures that are as mysterious as they are compelling – we don’t know who to trust in this film, with every person we encounter, regardless of their place in the narrative, carries some sinister sense of foreboding danger, embodying the contemporary social milieu in a way that is quite riveting when it is thoroughly enigmatic. Perhaps the standouts of the film are Udo Kier, who plays the malicious Michael, the head of a group of foreign tourists on what appears to be a deadly excursion to the small village of Bacurau, and Sônia Braga, who is doing something truly captivating in this film. Playing the part of Dr Domingas, she’s a force of nature – a terrifying, intimidating woman who seems to see something her fellow townspeople fail to, being something of an oracle to the foreboding danger that’s about to be unleashed onto their peaceful hamlet. Braga is extraordinary in the film and makes such an impression, we don’t realize how little time she actually has on screen. Bacurau isn’t a film necessarily driven by the performances, since they’re essentially woven into the plot like any other part of the story, but we can’t deny that there is something powerful underpinning these characters, consistently keeping us at a distance but drawing us even closer at the same time.

Bacurau is a film that I think we should avoid trying to rationalize right now – as it stands, this is a film that doesn’t need us to waste our time attempting to find some understanding in, but rather one that wants us to surrender ourselves to the deranged vision of the world incited by Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, who go to extraordinary lengths to bring this story to the screen in a natural and authentic way, blending style and commentary in quite unexpected ways. This is the kind of artwork that seems entirely abstract now, but will undoubtedly make more sense when looking back retrospectively, since there’s something quite revolutionary about this film that may be the sign of some spark of genius, but isn’t all that clear at the present moment, a bewildering but fascinating approach taken by the directors, who seem to be designing something intentionally perplexing. Unquestionably a film that is ahead of its time, Bacurau is essentially a psychedelic adventure that hearkens back to the more freewheeling days of action-based westerns that dismissed logic in favour of a more demented interpretation of the world. Taking the skeletal structure of many incredibly entertaining action films, and supplementing them with some bleaker commentary, such as the spectre of colonialism that lingers heavily over the proceedings, Mendonça Filho and Dornelles put together a truly rivetting drama that avoids all attempts at categorization, and makes it very clear that it has absolutely no intention of offering a solution, at least not in the traditional sense.  The concepts of the predator and their prey blur together in Bacurau, an incredible bizarre but thoroughly worthwhile story of bandits that feels both referential to the old masters of alternative action cinema, and entirely original, almost as if the filmmakers were trying to not only rekindle the legacy of the weird western, but also evoke a new kind of storytelling that feels refreshing and subversive, and entirely memorable, even if it can sometimes be a difficult film to digest – if anything, Bacurau‘s only true flaw is too much ambition, which is certainly not something to be criticized, but rather celebrated.