It’s quite a brew, rich and extremely filling, but also chunky and uneven it leaves your stomach in knots and your head in a very strange place. Also in the mix: horror and science fiction, psychotropic drugs and traditional folklore, UFO-shaped drone cameras and vintage firearms, Udo Kier and Sônia Braga (the brilliant star of Mendonça’s “Aquarius”). And that’s before a bunch of “Most Dangerous Game”-style thrill seekers show up, looking to get their kicks by racking a very high body count and pushing the movie toward a spectacular whirlwind of violence.ĭirected by Kleber Mendonça Filho and his regular production designer, Juliano Dornelles, “Bacurau” is a modern-day western with some of the raw, hallucinatory power of a Sergio Leone epic, plus some hypnotic electronica lifted from John Carpenter. Bacurau no longer appears on GPS maps, and cellular communications are nonexistent. The residents are embroiled in a battle over water access with a corrupt local politician. The time is a few years from now, and this (fictional) backwater is being strategically erased from history. “Bacurau” takes its name from a small village in northeastern Brazil that comes under enormous threat from forces both within and without.

In a futuristic social order where the slaughter of human beings has become a transactional, recreational activity, death very well may be preferable to life. It may sound like a threat, but it isn’t presented as one the man asking the question is doing so with the utmost sincerity. The question - and the answer - land with brutal force in “Bacurau,” the strange and harrowing Brazilian feature that shook up the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday.

Times critic Justin Chang is filing regular dispatches from the 72nd annual Cannes Film Festival, which runs May 14-25 in France.

Les miserables full movie google doc