In Review: 'Pictures of Ghosts,' 'Sometimes I Think About Dying'

In a pair of indies this week, Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho reflects on the neighborhoods and movie houses of his home city while Daisy Ridley downshifts from 'Star Wars' to a small drama.

Pictures of Ghosts
Dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho
93 min.

Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho makes films that feel three-dimensional, defined by a sense of place that’s of paramount importance. If you’ve seen any of his three features—2012’s Neighboring Sounds, 2015’s Aquarius, and 2019’s Bacurau—then it’s likely that the first thing you remember is what they look and sound like, before anything that actually happens in them. (And given the crazy shit that happens in Bacurau, like UFO sightings and Mad Max-style marauding and the mere presence of Udo freakin’ Kier, that’s no small thing.) Two of the three films take place in Recife, the country’s fourth largest city and Mendonça Filho’s hometown, a seaside locale of fading luster that he invests with tremendous feeling. Neighboring Sounds is a contemporary film and Aquarius is set in the ‘80s, yet both bring Recife to vibrant life while eulogizing it at the same time.

Mendonça Filho’s lovely new documentary Pictures of Ghosts does likewise, though it may be more resonant to fans of his work than those encountering him for the first time. Drawing on footage and home movies from his formative years, including some amusingly gory attempts at artisanal horror, and other shots of Recife past and present, the film recalls an autobiographical documentary like Terence Davies’s Of Time and the City, though Mendonça Filho isn’t nearly as cutting or opinionated a host and he keeps the audience at more of an arm’s length. For those who have seen a film like Neighboring Sounds, though, it’s a fascinating study in how personal observations and attentiveness can spill over into the texture of a feature film. In one stretch, for example, Mendonça Filho talks about working the incessant barking of the dog that lived next to his family’s apartment on to the soundtrack. That’s part of the sound of the streets. 

Divided into three parts—”The Setúbal Apartment,” “The Cinemas of Downtown Recife,” and “Churches and Holy Ghosts”—Pictures of Ghosts starts in Mendonça Filho’s apartment, which his family has occupied since the ‘70s. Before they arrived, just 250 meters from the beach, that section of Recife was a popular tourist destination, with a resort hotel where Vivian Leigh and her daughters once vacationed. Over time, as crime and decay started to weaken the area—the outbreak of termites in Aquarius also has a real-life connection—Mendonça Filho notes the gates and bars and razor wire that started to line the buildings of the neighborhood, which had become so overwhelmed with feral cats that he installed netting over the windows. 

The most compelling section of Pictures of Ghosts, however, reflects on the movie houses that once used to enliven a downtown area that would eventually be unable to support them. One was built as a UFA house, intended to screen German propaganda films at a time when the government was a dictatorship sympathetic to the Nazi cause. Another is the astonishingly opulent Veneza, which opened in 1970 with the premiere of Airport in 70mm, but would eventually house a shopping mall when its fortunes declined. The evolution of these spaces is handled with melancholy and curiosity, and their faded splendor had an impact on Mendonça Filho that can be felt in his work. 

“I’ll lock up the cinema with a key of tears,” says a long-time projectionist who’s about to close down another movie house. Mendonça Filho communicates the pain of that loss well, but Pictures of Ghosts could neither be described as a nostalgia trip nor a lament for glory days past. He carries those memories with him while still holding a boundless affection and interest in what Recife has become. The ghosts of its past are still visible to him. — Scott Tobias

Pictures of Ghosts opens in New York and Chicago tomorrow, and expands from there.

Sometimes I Think About Dying
Dir. Rachel Lambert
91 min.

Fran (Daisy Ridley) sits quietly at her desk at a small office in the Pacific Northwest with a view of the harbor, where she works on spreadsheets. That pretty much defines her to her co-workers and, it would seem, to herself, apart from the moments when her mind drifts to fantasies of her own death. Sometimes it’s in a shelter on a beach or a mostly vacant wing of her office building or a forest, but each location has a vividness alien to her day-to-day life. From all appearances, Fran has accepted this as her fate. Then a new co-worker named Robert (Dave Merheje) arrives and, in the course of an introduction game, says he likes “awkward silences.” This gets Fran’s attention even before her co-workers laugh to break the awkward silence that follows. Maybe, Fran seems to think, she should get to know this guy.

An adaptation of Stefanie Abel Horowitz’s short film of the same name that in turn was adapted from the play Killers by Kevin Armento (Horowitz, Armento, and Katy Wright-Mead share the writing credit), this Rachel Lambert-directed film is a delicate thing that rests on a pair of strong performances from Ridley (taking a considerable step away from Star Wars) and Merheje. Fran instinctively withdraws from social situations and, in most ways, from life. Robert instantly wins over the room just by being himself. Yet somehow it seems like they ought to be friends, and maybe more than friends.

Sometimes I Think About Dying surrounds them with funny, if familiar, takes on the banality of office culture, highlighted by Meg Stalter as a “fun” manager who likes to bring a little “pizazz” to the place. Veteran character actress Marcia DeBonis’  heartbreaking monologue provides another highlight. But mostly Sometimes I Think About Dying  shares its protagonist’s central problem: It can’t stop shrinking away. The film begins in first gear and keeps trying to downshift and, stretched to feature length with little variation between first scene and last, Fran’s hesitancy to open herself up to life becomes frustrating to the point of exhaustion. It too often feels like the film itself doesn’t know how to come to life. —Keith Phipps