Brazil: Central Station (1998)

Central Station is a Brazilian film directed by Walter Salles and starring: Fernanda Montenegro (Dora), Vinicius de oliveira (Josué), Marilia Pèra (Irene) and Soia Lira (Ana).

The film takes place in the suffocating corridors of the Central Station in Rio de Janeiro Brazil. One of the main characters is Dora, a former teacher that earns her living by writing letters dictated to her by illiterate people who come to her while at the station. Hardened by loneliness, adversity and the daily flow of desperate faces that pass through the station, Dora has developed an indifference towards people and doesn’t value the importance of her mission. When one of her clients dies leaving her little son Josue behind, Dora’s heart starts to open again. At the beginning she wants nothing to do with the boy, but eventually she decides to help him since she realizes he is absolutely alone in this world. She agrees to accompany him on a journey to find his father. She travels with him to a remote area of northeastern Brazil. 

As the story continues, both boy and woman become attached and develop a special almost mother-son relationship with each other. They both discover they need each other in order to change their actual existence. 

Central Station presents many social themes through out the movie. It places us in front to the limitations and difficulties of a significant portion of the population of the country Brazil. It also shows us the lack of appropriate responses from the government to the satisfaction of basic needs. Far from the stereotypical images of Rio de Janeiro's festive Carnival, the film confronts us with problems like the absence of a policy of care for children at risk. The same situation that Josue goes through  after the death of his mother is lived by many other children since there appears not to be public institutions that take care of these type of cases properly.

Central Station touched my heart in a very special way. It has certainly become one of my favorite movies. It was so heart warming to see how the innocence and sincerity of a child was able to break the barries that Dora had construct around her in order to avoid loving or showing the tender part of her being. The transformation that the woman goes through is invaluable and the message that the story leaves is wonderful. It is important that adults learn from children that it is never late to love and give to another person because what you get in return may be much bigger. THUMBS UP!