Welcome to Portugal, 1968! António de Oliveira Salazar’s political life has reached its end after decades as the head of Portugal’s military regime. That fact is known and acknowledged by everyone, except the dictator himself… That is the starting point for Our Father – The Last Days of a Dictator, the new film from Portuguese director José Filipe Costa (A Pleasure, Comrades!; Red Line). The character study, world premiering in the Big Screen Competition program of the Rotterdam International Film Festival (IFFR), is sure to make audiences reflect on the past, the present, and the future.
“The world’s longest-serving fascist dictator has ruled for 36 years over his country and its sprawling colonies,” explains a synopsis. “But after a fall leaves him frail and incapacitated, Salazar is sent to the Palacete de São Bento, his official residence, to recover. Unbeknownst to him, power has already slipped from his grasp, and his rule has ended. Yet those around him – his devoted maid, a cast of loyal servants, and the occasional visiting doctor – continue to uphold the illusion of his authority. As Salazar drifts from room to room, still convinced he controls his empire, he becomes a tragic figure lost in time and trapped in the confines of his own deteriorating mind.”
Jorge Mota stars as the dictator, while Vera Barreto portrays his loyal maid in the film that he co-wrote with Letícia Simões and Daniel Tavares.
Check out a trailer for the movie here.
Costa talked to THR‘s Georg Szalai about religious references in the film, how Portugal has dealt with its past, the resurgence of right-wing politicians and fascism, and what’s next for him.
In your film, you are taking on not only a dark part of the past but also a peculiar one as far as Salazar not realizing he has already been replaced. How widely is this aspect of the story known or discussed in Portugal?
A lot of people in Portugal don’t know about this. It’s not something that, for example, you would see a teacher teaching at school.
Can you tell me a bit about the Palacete de São Bento where Salazar lived and did you actually shoot the movie there?
It is still the official residence of the Prime Minister. The interiors are (shot) in a different house or small palace. But the exteriors are really São Bento.
While watching the film, I noticed how much it isn’t only about Salazar but also his “team” working for him in that same building, which makes them a strange community.
You’re completely right. It’s about this space and the relationships between the people in it. It’s as if they were in a small world, but at the same time reflecting what Portugal was at that time and what Salazar himself wanted Portugal to be. Because in a way, São Bento was a small village. We even have the hen house. We decided to always have the sound of chickens when we are in the room with Salazar. They were really important to him. There were chickens, turkeys, rabbits. Some sources say that they had 500 chickens. It’s incredible. I don’t know if I believe it.
But it is about that house and about the relationship among the people there, and also the dilemmas, the paradoxes, the contradictions that they had to live with. They were staging that farce. I was much more interested in their dilemmas and morals than in the figure of the dictator because they were devoted to the dictator. The housekeeper, Maria, had incredible love for him. She became an important figure, a key character in this farce. I was very interested in this microcosm.
You are showing us a small setting but through that are illuminating the bigger picture…
Maybe this is too intellectual but I was interested in micro facets and in everyday life fascism – what’s going on between the characters and the violence of small things, such as how the housekeeper relates to the maids, how Salazar relates to the maids, and mainly the relationship between the housekeeper, Maria – which is a very telling Portuguese name – and Salazar.
Was there any material about this microcosm you’re putting the spotlight on that you could read?
The script was very much based on the notes, the diaries taken by Salazar’s personal doctor. The diaries were published in a book, but it would have been impossible to be published during the dictatorship because he was very honest. He says he was tapped by the political police, and he was also censored. The doctor of the dictator was under censorship! So the regime went against its own creator, and that is a very fascist trait. It became a collective hallucination. And thinking about and getting inside that world, it became more delirious because they are living with very strong contradictions. Maria should tell the truth to her idol, but she always keeps lying to him and keeps staging this farce, asking people to come and visit him. So it’s very bizarre.
I recently heard someone say that a lot of what he sees or hears on news programs sounds “bizarre” these days. Do you think people will watch Our Father and feel reminded of political developments and news in some parts of the world?
I hope so. The film was not made with that in mind when I started writing it. But now things are a bit different. Things have become more and more delirious – what is happening now with (U.S. President Donald) Trump or the far right in Germany, for example. It’s like people live hallucinatory moments in a collective hallucination. And their emotions can be contagious. Fascist politicians know very well how to deal with that. They are very intelligent. They feed off the fear of people. It’s like: “There is an enemy. We have to go up against that enemy.” That is happening now in Portugal. Immigrants have become the enemies. Now everyone is talking about immigration, and we have more far-right people in the parliament. The speed of this change, from the moment I started to write the script and nowadays, has been incredible.
You mentioned sound before. How key is that for you?
To give a sense of that world of the film, I’m proposing to the spectator to enter this world and experience sounds and images. Sound is very important.
I felt the sound added to the sense that the dictator and the people working for him are in a bubble and it would just take someone to put a finger through it for that bubble to go poof!
That’s a very interesting view. When we wrote, shot and edited the film, we wanted to give people the sense that (this small part of the world) is on the brink but that nothing happens because there Is something deeply rooted that obliges people to behave in the way they do. They have taboos, obligations, the idea of everything having to be clean and in order. Everything is under certain rules. But it’s something that’s imposed by the characters themselves. I was aiming for subtlety because sometimes that’s much more violent than screaming at people “We were a fascist country and we were very repressive!”
[Spoiler warning! The next paragraph contains spoilers involving two scenes in the film.]
Spoilers! For me, one of the most violent scenes of the film is when a maid cuts her braid and offers that to the dictator. Or the scene where Maria kills a butterfly. These people were a bit indifferent. It was going on, going on – going on in the system.
Some of those scenes gave me goosebumps…
I love the idea of film being sensory.
Tell me a bit about the title Our Father. Salazar never had kids…
He never traveled to (then-Portuguese colonies) Mozambique or Angola, because he was afraid. And he didn’t give speeches to big crowds like (Italy’s Benito) Mussolini or (Adolf) Hitler (in Germany). Wherever he could act through institutions, including schools, he did. And he used the fear of the Second World War. Portugal didn’t get into the Second World War, and (supporters say) Salazar was always brave because he was the one who saved us from the Second World War and he was like a father. That was not our title in the beginning, but we started to think about all the connections with religion and also about people needing someone who can take care of them because they are afraid.
That religious theme is also reflected in the name of the housekeeper, Maria. What can you tell me about the actress, Vera Barreto, and Jorge Mota who plays Salazar?
He works mainly in theater. And the actress is in soap operas. But I liked her work very much, and she was my first choice. She says “I don’t like doing cinema a lot” (because it requires scenes to be re-shot from different set-up angles). But she’s incredible. She was very special and had a world she could relate just with her face. She was 84 years old (during the shoot) and we had some days when we were shooting until four in the morning. And she was there because she loves to work. She loves to be an actress.
After the film, I read up on Maria and her dedication to Salazar.
She was illiterate. And when she came to Lisbon, she learned how to write and to read, and she became very influential being a housekeeper. Salazar liked her a lot. There was this idea that they were a couple. They were not. Nothing seems to explain their relationship. It was a very complex relationship. What was in her mind? Maybe she was thinking that she was doing the best thing. A lot of people in fascist regimes who are killing say they were only obeying orders and rules. And she was obeying rules that she created for herself and for others. And she understood the world of fascism. She was inside it, and she was also a victim. In the end, she was a victim because in the end – that is not in the film – she was given two weeks to get out of São Bento. So, yes, fascism is really human. (rolls his eyes)
Are you working on any new films?
My next project deals with me being in a village during the revolution (of 1974). I grew up in a village. The film deals with my memories because my grandmother was the second Protestant in the village, and I was raised in the church, going to Sunday school, which was very different compared to what was a Catholic country. It deals a lot with those memories and when things started to happen, like farms being occupied by left-wing people.
And a 12-year-character (deals with) everything – god, what is happening in the country. And he also is the friend of someone who comes from Angola. Yes, my best friends were from Angola, and they came with a big box full of things.
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