Brasilia: Life After Design is a documentary focusing on the unique brutalist capital city of Brazil.
A metropolis designed from the ground up by Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer in the 1950s. The film follows a number of the city’s residents as they negotiate the now dilapidated capital.
Designated a world heritage site, the city cannot be changed and has not grown to meet modern day demands. Instead many satellite cities have sprung up, hosting an ever growing population. It is Bart Simpson’s directorial debut, and he is joined by Scottish editor Colin Monie.
Life After Design has a unique charm to it. The slice-of-life approach, and the familiarity the filmmakers have with the city make you feel as though you are being guided by a knowledgeable acquaintance. The topic is inherently interesting too, a city designed and built under one vision. How does that vision stand up decades later?
We see a city out of time, and the people living there are adjusting to an uncertain reality of job insecurity, their only way out is to become a civil servant. But they are competing in a pool of thousands for just one job. This is made all the more visceral by the current troubles in Brazil. Dilma Rousseff is filmed making a speech, she has since been impeached and ousted from the presidency. Her very words about democracy during the press conference turned out to be hypocritical.
There is a pathos that lies over everything, a woman who cleans houses and returns to a broken relationship in a bare-brick home. A souvenir salesman who feels alienated and finds his calling helping the depressed and suicidal at a phone-line. The result is an emotional attachment that makes the film all the more involving. Alexandre Klinke and Step Carruthers’ score makes a fantastic accompaniment to the film. A rhythmic collection of music the nicely punctuates the work.
There are issues with Life After Design, and its full potential is never quite realised as a result. The pacing is stop-and-start, each section is bookmarked by gorgeous still shots of the city. But these shots stall any momentum gathered, and the order in which interviews are strung together often hamstring the flow of the film. When we are told about neighbours never seeing each other in Brasilia we get a sense of loneliness, but then have to sit through an unrelated segment before returning to that theme at the suicide phone-line. Together they could have supported the rich emotional seam that runs through the picture, apart they lose their impact.
The quality of cinematography varies massively as well. Some shots are well composed, showing vistas and portraits of Brasilia. Others are shot on phone, not an issue in of itself, but the resulting footage is grainy and shaky. Not in a Paul Greengrass way, more like a video taken from Facebook.
Life After Design is an interesting film. An at times intimate portrait of a city told through its inhabitants that can engross, but also stumble over its own feet. There are few other films like it. At an hour and 18 minutes it tells its story without overstaying its welcome. If architecture, design and human interaction piques your interest then this is the film for you.
Feature photo credit: Aconite Productions
