ghostshousegávea

7/21/2019 GhostsHouseGvea

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Ghosts in the House of Gvea: Daydreaming and forgetting in Santiago,

a feature documentary by Joo Moreira Salles

Catarina Mouro PhD in Film

When cinema was invented it had to struggle to become recognized as an art form,

overcoming the idea that it was simply a technique. Filmmakers were immediately

drawn by its capacity to manipulate reality and transform it. Dreams became obviously a

source of inspiration. But if we analyse film history and its bibliography we realise

however that dreams have been conventionally exiled in the country of fiction. There is

hardly no mention of dreams in documentary and this is probably due to its problematic

relationship with reality. How can we trace a dream?

Lately documentary and its quest to portray subjectivity, has felt more and more the need

to represent the immaterial, the memory, the past and the fantasy Many documentaries

have used mechanisms related to memory as a way of portraying this inner subjective

world, but there is still very little reference to dream as a source for this kind of

representation.

In this presentation I wish to analyze some scenes in the feature-length documentary

Santiagoand argue how memory connected to dream can play an important role in the

depiction of the inner worlds of characters and director. I want to articulate this analysis

with the concepts of memory and dream explored by Paul Ricoeur and Henri Bergson,

namely the idea of an unconscious memory, and the way past only comes into action

through the interpretation of the present. For Ricoeur a memory is inseparable of its

narrative and interpretation, and in this narrative, forgetting and dreams have a role to

play. Ultimately the film Santiago is a journey through the subconscious of both the

director and his main character and finally a journey through our own sub-conscious as


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spectators.

But first let me introduce Santiago, the film. In 1992 Joo Moreira Salles, a young

Brazilian director at the time, decided to use the left-overs of film-stock from

advertisements he used to direct and produce with his brother Walter Salles, to make a

film about his old retired butler Santiago. Santiago, born in Italy and an emigrant in

South America since his childhood, was the butler of the family Salles for nearly 30 years

in the famous House of Gvea in Rio de Janeiro. This house represented the 50s in Rio,

when it was the capital of Brazil. It also represented a life of opulence in the context of

dictatorship. The main idea of the film according to the director was to reveal Santiago as

a picturesque character, who sees himself as the holder of the houses memories.

In the 90s, Rio de Janeiro became a violent place, Brasilia was now the countrys capital,

and Rio lost its identity. The house became an alter ego for the city, a drifting place,

ditched by history. Santiago was to become the voice for this memory, an abstraction

embedded with nostalgia.

But when Joo began editing he realised this conceptual approach didnt work at all, the

film was missing something he could not identify at the time, and after many attempts he

decided to abandon the film to come back to it only 13 years later.

In 2005 when Joo decides to come back to the lost film he tries first of all to identify

what went wrong, what was missing, what was there that had been dismissed. By doing

this he is embarking on a kind of psycho-analytical journey through the rushes. This new

attempt to sculpt the rushes and to find a new sub-text, in order to transform them into

something meaningful and truthful to him and his character, is very similar to a process

of dream-working: The process by which the unconscious produces a dream and recalls it


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the following morning through the articulation of a narrative. Likewise, Joo had to dig

into the rushes to extract from them new meanings, using metaphors and other symbolic

forms, in a constant process of self-examination and self-reflexivity.

Here lies in my view the first layer of dream in this film Santiago.

In one of his essays, Raymond Bellour introduces the notion of Blocage Symbolique

referring to the content of films, which is not perceived immediately, which is hidden, or

disguised. He also compares the mechanism of oblivion in Dream to the oblivion in Film.

Sometimes there are images we cannot recall, others that we thought we saw but can no

longer see , others that we transform into something different. I believe that in the shoot

and the first stage of editing, Joo blocked many things.

One of the approaches taken by Joo and his editors in this second attempt to make sense

of the rushes, was to include all the off-screen moments of the film, or moments before

the clapper-board. Sounds with no image, images with no sound, all were revealed.

1stclip: 130

By revealing these Back-stage moments, theses accidents like Joo calls them, he

realised how much the film was a consequence of the relationship established between

him and Santiago. By acknowledging this and accepting to be in the film Joo manages to

overcome the blocage felt in the fist stage. Using a self-reflexive approach to the film

Joos dream becomes present: the dream he made for his first film and the interpretation

of this dream in this second film.

But there is a second layer of dreamin this film regarding Santiago, that Joo had to

reveal and understand in order to enter Santiagos inner world.


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Some years after the shoot in 1992 Santiago died and left Joo his most precious

treasure: a compilation of hundreds of note books, 3.000 pages of hand-written stories

about the European Aristocracy since the Roman Empire, which Santiago faithfully

copied from different documents from different libraries in many different languages.

This was a work of a life time. In between these tales, Santiago uses metaphors and

explores his unconscious to talk about himself.

2nd

clip: 111

By interpreting Santiagos dream, Joo is using his authority as a director, he is once

again controlling the film, leaving little space for Santiago and the spectator, and yet we

can argue that this moment in the film is there for another reason. By emphasizing this

moment of Santiagos diary, Joo is telling us that dreams are definitely a door to the

inner world of the characters. And by interpreting Santiagos dream, Joo is once again

stating and recognizing how much this film is his dream about Santiago, his voice, and

not the voice of Santiago.

This is therefore a journey to many pasts and many recollections. These different pasts

become present through a work of interpretation and narrative, but also a work of

forgetting and a work of dreaming, as we will see.

Paul Ricoeur mentions in his book Memory, History and Forgetting the notion of

reserve of forgetting which connects with the idea of finding the voice of the

unconscious in our memory. By reserve of forgetting he means the pleasure of recalling

what one once saw, heard, felt, learned, acquired. This happens when a neural trace

disappears in opposition to a physical trace. The recalling produces an image, a memory-

image.


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When Joo comes back to the rushes 13 years later he realises he has forgotten his initial

story, that many bits of sound and images have disappeared, but more than this the very

initial purpose and idea of the film had disappeared. This moment of forgetfulness of

oblivion towards the film, his childhood and the deceased Santiago is similar to a feeling

of mourning, aging and death. And yet, for Ricoeur it is this act of forgetting that is

essential to the recalling. If a memory returns it is because it was forgotten.

In his book Matter and memory Henri Bergson argues that memories which are not yet

conscious or havent yet been recollected have to be taken on board the same we

recognize the value of things we cannot perceive. I believe both Ricoeur and Bergson are

talking about a past which is part of the present but which we are still not conscious

about, which is still forgotten in a place, but to which we can have access through

recollection. In order to reach this place Bergson says we must carry ourselves into the

region of dreams beyond the realm of action. A human being who should dream his life

instead of living it would no doubt thus keep before his eyes at each moment the infinite

multitude of the details of his past history". He adds we must have the power to value

the useless, we must have the will to dream () According to Bergson the images stored

up in the spontaneous memory, in opposition to an active memory, are dream-images

which appear and disappear independently of our will; and which hide all our past.

Paul Ricoeur concludes by mentioning Bergsons notion of a contemplative memory

when trying to evoke dreams and all which is latent in our past, a kind of thinking at the

limit and relating it to his notion of reserve of forgetting. He ends by saying that

forgetting in this sense implies a work of mourning and letting the unconscious reveal

itself, letting dreams come to surface as a way of making sense of the past through the

present.


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As a conclusion and coming back to the film Santiago, I believe that despite its analytical

approach, the film has managed to cross the thresholds of consciousness, in the words

of Bergson, to enter the life of dreams.

By revealing his inner world as a director in trouble and his false attempts to represent

Santiago in the past, acknowleding his incapacity to transcend the hierarchy between him

and his butler. Joo manages to give a new space to Santiagos inner world, bringing the

past to the present, and questioning his ability to forget, remember and dream. Joo is

hoping that he can now retract from his initial point of view. Still we are always looking

at Santiago through Joos eyes, even when Santiago is desperately trying to have some

control over the film. It is the dream-like atmosphere of the film that dictates this. We

mustnt fool ourselves; we are always in Joos dream.

At the end one is still left with some doubts. What else has Joo concealed from his

rushes? I believe this is intentional. This is an open film, a film which ultimately could be

endlessly reedited, the same way as a dream can be re-dreamt, revealing at each time

different layers of memory and meaning. In some way the voice of the film transcended

the voice of director and character, and this is what makes it such a powerful, inspiring

film.

If we still have time I will leave you with a final scene of the film, a moment

when Joo has finally allowed space for Santiagos interpretation of his own dream.

3rdclip: 1 min

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