Fernando Bezerra gives a mesmerizing performance as an innocent bystander in his own life in Eryk Rocha’s TRANSEUNTE

TRANSEUNTE (PASSER-BY) (Eryk Rocha, 2010)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Saturday, July 14, 8:00, and Friday, July 20, 7:00
Series runs July 12-24
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

Brazilian filmmaker Eryk Rocha’s feature narrative debut, Transeunte (Passerby), is a beautifully poetic, lyrical examination of loneliness and connection. Fernando Bezerra gives a brilliant performance as Expedito, a sixty-five-year-old man who spends his days in Rio de Janeiro walking the streets and riding buses as he puts flowers on his mother’s grave, picks up his benefits check, takes a nap on his couch, goes to the doctor, listens to his old-fashioned transistor radio, and stops by a bar for a few drinks. A simple man who seems to be content in his small life, Expedito is an innocent bystander in the world; Rocha often cuts to extreme close-ups of Expedito’s eyes as the character watches and listens to other people singing, dancing, preaching, celebrating a birthday, and just having regular conversations as he takes it all in from a distance. He rarely even speaks, saying only what is absolutely necessary as he goes about his daily business. Yet he does all this with a quiet confidence, his deeply chiseled face, rigid brow, and slow gait (in opposition to his name) revealing him to be a simple man with simple pleasures instead of a sad, lonely man leading a nowhere life. Rocha, who has made such documentaries as Rocha que Voa and Pachamama and has also been an editor, actor, composer, and cinematographer (though still only in his thirties), uses that varied background to create a mesmerizing tale that mixes fiction and reality, set to a lively score and shot in a lush black-and-white, recalling such seminal films as Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep and Lionel Rogosin’s On the Bowery. A magical cinematic experience, TRANSEUNTE is screening July 14 at 8:00 and July 20 at 7:00 as part of MoMA’s annual Premiere Brazil! series, with Rocha on hand to talk about the film on July 14. The festival runs through July 24 with such other works as Breno Silveira’s À Beira do Caminho (Roadside), Vicente Amorim’s Corações Sujos (Dirty Hearts), Kiko Goifman and Claudia Priscilla’s Olhe pra Mim de Novo (Look at Me Again), and Selton Mello’s O Palhaço (The Clown).