Few films I know make theirs the famous Mitry quote to as much of an extent as Miguel Gomes's Our Beloved Month of August. For the first half, only snapshots of a world, with its local heroes (who jump off bridges for money), its pop tunes, and only the faintest hints of montage devices (a song about childhood dreams playing to a firemen's truck driving by, just after a close-up of a child drawing said fireman's truck). The act of filming is acknowledged but, as will soon become obvious, not with any intention of deconstructing anything... Rather with the always patient expectancy of a narrative being born, an event described, in a scene about a third of the way through, as an almost religious miracle in the hands of the sound man (who, as the hilarious ending establishes, is symbolically to be thanked for the beauty and coherence of the integration of songs as thematic and emotional counterpoints to the narrative).
And when the film that Gomes was supposed to be filming in the first half of the narrative comes on, it is indeed a miracle: all the disparate elements that composed the first half as documentary are reconfigured as fiction, given a place that brings new meaning to the new scene and puts the initial appearance in a new light. I hope I get a chance to see this again soon. This is probably one of those films that unfolds endlessly to give you, in a modest and non-ostentatious way, humanity.
Things to look into:
Links between this and key films about narrative construction: The Wind Will Carry Us, Celine and Julie...
The use of pop songs is the best since Distant Voices, Still Lives.
And I can't remember a more beautiful first time scene in any film.
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