Dethroned by his own protégés in September 1968 after ruling Portugal as a far-right police state for 36 years, economist-turned-autocrat Antonio Salazar lived for another two years in his official residence, struggling with dementia while those around him both allowed and encouraged him to believe he was still the beloved leader of his nation. This maddening and bizarre state of play and mind is brought vividly to the screen in Our Father – The Last Days of a Dictator, in which Salazar’s delusions and delirium are wrought large through a mix of poised (and often darkly humorous) daytime sequences in his palatial mansion contrasted to the fantastical scenes of his animal-fueled nightmares.
Most Portuguese filmmakers have approached the rise and fall of Estado Novo – the self-described “National Dictatorship” which reigned over Portugal from 1932 to 1974 – by either exposing the atrocities committed in the name of the state during that period (Susana Sousa de Dias’ 48, for example), the brutal and never-ending colonial wars in African colonies (from Manoel de Oliveira’s No, or the Vain Glory of Command to Ivo Ferreira’s Letters from War) or the collapse of the regime itself (Maria de Medeiros’ April Captains). José Filipe Costa, on the other hand, is an outlier and his documentaries tend to question standard representations of the Carnation Revolution that ultimately restored democracy in Portugal in 1974.
Having developed his own peculiar knack for getting real-life subjects into role-playing past versions of themselves in A Pleasure, Comrades! (2019), Costa’s first full-throttle fictional feature is proof of his ability to tease nuanced performances from his splendid cast, while he propels reality to another level with imaginative mise-en-scène. Transforming Salazar’s grandiose real-life domicile Palacete de São Bento – which remains, to this day, the official residence of the Portuguese prime minister – into a space of well-appointed yet ringing empty corridors and rooms, Our Father is an atmospheric piece about one man’s fading dreams of imperial grandeur and his intimates’ diverse reactions towards that slide towards historical and personal obscurity.
While Our Father alludes to the social transformations sparked by Salazar’s ousting and internal exile in 1968 – represented by the growing insubordination of Salazar’s trio of young maids – Costa’s film could also be taken as a general allegory of banished despots and their pampering enablers present and past, in politics and elsewhere. Bolstered by cinematographer Vasco Viana’s vivid evocation of both the real and the fantastical, Our Father should interest festival programmers and historians alike.
The film begins with the 79-year-old Salazar (Jorge Mota) bed-ridden, recovering from a massive stroke which provided the pretext for his underlings to remove him from power in an internal coup. Not that he knows: somehow, those around him continue to play along with his delusions, addressing him as “Mr. President” (that is, prime minister), giving him with policy documents to read, and listening to his occasional lecture about being a father of his nation (he proclaims “governance is about protecting the masses from themselves,” in the benign tone of a retired university professor).
Of course, Salazar no longer commands an army of lieutenants at his beck and call. His entourage has been reduced to essentially a quartet, headed by Maria (Catarina Avelar), Salazar’s (real-life) aide who remains steadfast in sealing the residence from the reality outside. When the radio news bulletins report on the new rulers’ attempts to expand freedom of expression in public, for example, she turns the dial for Salazar to listen to old-time colonialist ditties instead.
Seemingly genuine in her affection towards her lifelong mentor (and now ailing ward), and embittered by the social transformations which led to his downfall, Maria continues to indulge Salazar by reading him supportive letters sent in from the Portuguese colonies in Africa, arranging interviews for him with supposedly friendly journalists, and getting some of his acolytes to pay him respectful visits at the residence.
But the more Maria does, the more Salazar struggles. Visitors are gobsmacked (or even quietly overjoyed) at the tyrant’s slide into incoherence and incompetence, and Maria’s control over her three young maids also begins to waver.
Painting Salazar as a sort of debilitated King Lear of his times, Costa offers a thoughtful examination of how a despot’s mind works. With the help of Mota’s majestic performance as Salazar, Costa avoids a straightforward representation of tyranny as stemming from pure evil: here’s a man who is at once mild in his everyday demeanour, but also passive-aggressive in getting things done his way. Can people trust him, for example, when he says he doesn’t like being in charge, but would prefer “a life in the fields with ticks and lice”?
In his own way, Costa also tries to mine Salazar’s later-life mindset by diving headlong into his increasingly unnerving dreams of insurrectionary animals and subordinates. Surreal as those nightmares might seem – with credit to Claudia Lopes Costa’s production design – they are perhaps less grotesque than the desperation of former dictators and their associates in their attempt to hang on to their past glories and impose them on others.
Director: José Filipe Costa
Screenwriters: José Filipe Costa, Letícia Simoes, Daniel Tavares
Producers: Filipa Reis
Cast: Jorge Mota, Vera Barreto, Carolina Amaral, Cléia Almeida, Catarina Avelar
Director of photography: Vasco Viana
Editor: João Braz
Production designer: Claudia Lopes Costa
Music composer: João Godinho
Sound designer: Carlos Abreu
Production companies: Uma Pedra no Sapato
World sales: Portugal Film
Venue: International Film Festival Rotterdam (Big Screen Competition)
In Portuguese
112 minutes
