Justa
Extremely arthouse, but not as powerfull as A Metamorfose dos Pássaros since it’s about something external to the artists.
The places where the big fires burned everything and killed 66 people are indeed eerie, but this takes minimalism to a whole new level.
Even the main characters barely talk. There’s the kid, what I would call the protagonist, just lost her mother, and his father was all burnt up. The psychiatrist that treats her ruined her own relationship to take care of these strangers.
The older woman lost her husband, and her daughter abandoned her for that. It’s just too gruesome, having your husband leave the car and get trapped in melting asphalt.
There’s also a rebel teen, generically angry at everyone, but with a strong heart. He meets up with the older woman, saving her from undignified death.
The more bizarre element is a scene lifted from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre from what I can tell, it’s supposed to be poignant. Let’s not discuss the nudity, that takes Nomadland to task.
Personally, I would do things differently. The tasteless choice would be to do an gore fest, a giallo horror film with melting corpses and the like. The best option would be something more similar to Spotlight, a whodunit of sorts.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.