A review of the western genre based on the journalistic criticism of “Bacurau”

Abstract

This communication proposes to approach the feature film Bacurau (2019), by Kléber Mendonça and Juliano Dornelles, from the perspective of the notion of “ideological western”, taken up by film critic Luiz Carlos Merten and attributed to the cinematography of Glauber Rocha. Therefore, it is necessary to make an incursion not only in the journalistic text, analyzed under the light of Semiotics, but also in the history of cinema itself. In this sense, a whole set of legi-signs and sin-signs, interchangeable with each other and in constant process, make us discover filmic semioses that update the legacy of Brazilian culture. All this takes place without forgetting the legacy of cinematographic culture itself in Brazil and in the world, in a broad discussion based on the “western” cinematographic genre – the target of the most varied apprehensions regarding the film.