‘Bury Your Dead’ London Film Fest 2024 Review: A Beautiful Film With A Very Messy Script
Bury Your Dead (Enterre Seus Mortos)is set in a rural area of apocalyptic Brazil. Edgar Wilson (Selton Mello) is a roadkill collector plotting to escape with his girlfriend Nete (Marjorie Estiano). Edgar also sleepwalks and has violent dreams that plague him at night. Nete joins her aunt’s cult, which sets Edgar on a mission. This seems like a simple enough premise for this 128-minute film. However, this story isn’t easy to follow because the script is all over the place.
Marco Dutra’s latest film, Bury Your Dead, has most of the things we were hoping to see from the filmmaker. It’s a beautifully shot genre-blending tale with some pretty wonderful performances. The film builds a world so unique and interesting that I wish we had more time to explore it. However, the script is a bit of a mess. It feels like the filmmaker gave us a puzzle with half of the pieces missing.
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The script, written by Dutra and Ana Paula Maia, has an illness wiping out animals and children that is never really explained. It also has a religious cult, planetary travel, and a surprise killer. None of this is given enough weight to help us understand the significance. Also, none of it truly connects to the other moving pieces cohesively. Bury Your Dead leaves us assuming many things about what the film wanted to do, but because it’s such a mess, none of it is effective. While the project contains some very cool shots and interesting ideas, nothing adds up to anything.
Dutra and company throw so many interesting ideas at us that it feels like a brainstorming session. Nothing is ever truly earned. Every new detail feels like a side quest and comes across as new information right until the end. The actors try to anchor us in this world with some pretty stellar performances. However, they can only do so much when the script is constantly changing. The last act specifically dumps so many new things in our lap that we don’t get time to pretend catharsis is possible before getting an ending that comes out of nowhere.
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I am a huge fan of Good Manners, the film written and directed by Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra. So, I take no pleasure in reporting that Dutra’s newest effort is a meandering mess. While Bury Your Dead has an interesting first half, and we get a few fleeting moments that remind us what Dutra is capable of, the script feels unsure of what it wants to accomplish. This leads to a jumble of ideas and abrupt turns, leaving audiences feeling like they’re watching several different movies being sewn together. It almost feels like an improv game where saying “yes and…” has led us to something epic and nonsensical. Unlike Good Manners where all the ideas, genres, and styles come together to give us a beautiful and coherent story, Bury Your Dead just gives us cool shots and leaves us with too many questions.
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Bury Your Dead
Summary
‘Bury Your Dead’ is beautifully shot and is packed with stellar performances. But a messy script holds the film back from achieving its full potential.
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