Um Sonho Em Manhattan (Manhattan By Numbers)

Procurando saber se esse filme que vi há anos já existe em dvd achei um link que continha meu nome, aí que eu fui lembrar que tinha uma pequena resenha minha num site falando do filme. Eis. Tem um erros na resenha, mas deixa pra lá. Bateu vontade de rever o filme que ainda continuo achando excelente, profundo em sua simplicidade (não é a característica maior dos melhores filmes iranianos?). Ah, e acho que não saiu em dvd ainda. E Amir Naderi desde 97 não filma, o que será que anda fazendo?

Essa resenha do Washington Post é bem legal (para arrebatar mais fãs pro filme):

‘Manhattan by Numbers’
By Hal Hinson
Washington Post Staff Writer
October 29, 1994

Iranian writer-director Amir Naderi may be the most gifted unknown filmmaker in the world today. His remarkable 1985 feature, "The Runner," used a combination of poetry and documentary to tell the story of a dispossessed boy who supports himself by selling ice on the streets of the port city of Abadan.

In Naderi's latest work, the equally impressive and similarly devastating "Manhattan by Numbers," the filmmaker takes to the streets again, this time in New York, where unemployed journalist George (John Wojda) makes a last-ditch effort to raise the money he needs to keep from being evicted. As in "The Runner," both the images and the story line here are straightforward and uncomplicated -- even seemingly mundane. After a brief but touching phone call to his wife and young daughter, who are staying with his in-laws in Queens, George moves through the streets of the city, from phone booth to phone booth, combing his address book for some friend or acquaintance who might lend him a hand.

Initially, the unchanging blandness of George's movements seems flat and unengaging, but slowly as the clock ticks down on the writer and his plight becomes increasingly desperate, the tension becomes almost intolerable. George becomes increasingly fixated on finding one old friend in particular -- another newspaperman named Tom Ryan. As George searches for his friend, it becomes apparent from the trail of abandoned addresses and lapsed friendships that Tom has fallen on hard times too. In the scummier sections of town, the drunks and bartenders all know his name; he even owes some of them money. But no one seems to know what has become of him.

In the middle of all this, a strange transformation takes place. Based on the thumbnail history that George pieces together, it's clear that his friend is in no position to help himself financially, much less anyone else. And yet George becomes so obsessed with finding him that the money becomes irrelevant. Tom turns out to be the forgotten man George is destined to become, and George's attempts to locate him become less of an attempt to find someone else than a quest for his own self.

Building on motifs of rootlessness and alienation, Naderi turns George into the sort of figure one might find in Dostoyevsky or Conrad. Naderi achieves powerful, evocative effects through simple means. At one point, George pauses to call his wife, and the image of this bereft individual standing amid the throngs on the sidewalk, assuring his family that all is well, is as tragic as a premonition of one's own death.

posted by RENATO DOHO 6:04 AM

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