Pedro Costa?

I haven't seen his latest, but I've seen all the others except for his first. I'm not excited that he's still filming the same locations with the same actors/people; it feels almost like a hairshirt he's donning to prove that this is Heavy Cinema about Real Issues. Ossos and Vanda's Room were his first films in that milieu, and his best.

The extended elevator scene (with the soldier) in Horse Money was so jarringly off-kilter with the rest of the movie, it made me wonder if he realizes he needs to change things up but no longer knows which way to go.

VV is the only one I've seen but I liked it a lot. I might have struggled with a solo home viewing, though.

Criterion's streaming most of them; Casa de Lava is a change, practically a Rohmer film.

It's really excellent, think I had it as top 3.

http://jonjost.wordpress.com/2021/08/08/san-pedro-and-vitalina/?fbclid=IwAR0Qv_skp9lp7kk9305iKlY2JTEEmr3wOgJQZJFLi062VafmVjVZ9Ac-dDk

"Colonialism" is a harsh accusation for a white American dude to be throwing around but fwiw the absence of liveliness he refers to is something I've also noticed as a major difference between how African communities actually live in Portugal and how they are portrayed by Costa.

In attempting to illuminate the lives of his characters and their world, Costa’s severe aestheticism instead kills them. Where Costa says he makes these films to give voice to the lives of these immigrants, instead he confines them to a narrow aesthetic trap, his aesthetic trap, far more limited than the socio-political realm to which they are confined in reality. The truth is that precious few people will ever see this film, and of those who do most live in an esoteric realm in which cinema is a bizarre host, in which watching movies, it is believed, will give you insight into the truth of life, a delusion which they share with their fellow cineastes. Costa – by his own admission – grew up in a cathedral, the Cinemateca Portuguese, ingesting his communions there, where he learned the vast catechisms of the cinema and came away with a litany of things he’d learned. He puts these on display for those in the know, a nod to this great name and and that and then another, for the priests to decipher and nod approvingly. Like Biblical citations or the Torah.

As it happens, I have lived in Lisboa a bit, and in the late 90’s visited Fontainhas when it was alive, a favela of homemade houses, mostly of immigrants from Cabo Verde, but also others. It was indeed a place of drugs and booze (just like classier neighborhoods), and it was very poor. But as other similar places around the world, it was also lively, colorful, energetic. As it were, compared to the dour Portuguese surrounding it, it had “rhythm” which came with the African source of its residents.

In Costa’s portrayals, commencing with his early 35mm films, this liveliness is largely absent and in Vitalina Verena, it is utterly absent – perhaps the men playing cards in the suffocating shadows being the only exception. So while Costa claims to be giving these people a voice, showing them to the world from which they are hidden, he is not really doing so; rather he is imposing his grim dour view upon them and claiming it is their voice. Just like colonialists always assert they are doing good for those they have occupied, bringing them salvation through Christ or capitalism. Of course Pedro would counter that his entourage of regulars are full participants, voluntarily sharing this work, and hence it is an expression of themselves, and not just Pedro’s vision. And in the muffled confines of the inner sanctum of his church, this will likely beget assent. As colonizers invariably find reason to ethically and morally take the high ground in their own minds.

That's a well-written piece, but I basically made the same point above in one paragraph that took Jost several pages. I don't feel qualified to judge the movie as either crypto-Catholicism or patronizing colonialism.
In the earlier Costa films, there was at least the feeling that life was continuing somewhere else, just offscreen - you might not expect main characters who were desperate parents or drug addicts to have the "liveliness" you mention, but there was a feeling that the unhappy events he was showing were just a part of the tapestry of the community. With Colossal Youth and Horse Money, heaviness combined with aestheticism grew overwhelming.
I still haven't seen Vitalina Varela. I'm curious what the other three posters upthread who said they liked the film would make of this essay.

What I've heard from people is a lot of gushing about this being Costa's most painterly film yet, which the essay also addresses. Zero interest in watching it but I will probably have to at some point.

Anyway it's weird to me that Costa has this standing as The Authentic Portrayer Of The Underclass while being a rich white dude whose films are mostly seen by other rich white dudes, in Portugal at least. I realise this is by no means unique in world cinema.

In terms of things to criticise in the essay I think he's very wrong about the saudade element - yes it's originally a product of colonialism, arriving as it did with the Portuguese language, but I think if you suggested that to be its standing now to anyone from a Portuguese language country they'd look at you like you're mad. João Gilberto's "Chega De Saudade", Cesária Evóra's godamn signature song for crying out loud, lots of other examples. And of course it resonates for immigrant populations in particular.

Costa is rich?

which watching movies, it is believed, will give you insight into the truth of life, a delusion which they share with their fellow cineastes.

this is just a bizarre statement btw

and weird sentence

It's excessive and snide sure but it is true that a lot of ppl feel more comfortable gaining that insight from movies about community x rather than engaging with members of that community, even if they're living right next to them.

Costa is rich?

Well-off, upper class, yes. He's not a billionaire or anything.