Crown me with roses, is enough

an analysis of the film The Year Of The Death Of Ricardo Reis, by João Botelho

Abstract

Observing the character category, centered on the figure of Ricardo Reis, Fernando Pessoa´s heteronym, turned into the central character of the Saramago´s novel The year of the death of Ricardo Reis (1984), lately adapted to the filmic language through the homonymous work by João Botelho, this article aims to discuss its cinematographic expression. For that, we analyze concepts such as character (Candido, 2011; Brait, 1985), hypertextuality (Genette, 2010), adaptation (Stam, 2016; Hutcheon, 2013), in addition to Bazin´s (1991), Azerêdo´s (2012, 2013, 2019), Reis´ (2017, 2018), among others, ideas. In the film, we observes a Ricardo Reis who faces issues that come against his values and require assertive positions. From this perspective, we notice thar the adaptation has similar points with contemporary political-social issues, such as religious fanaticism and the rise of totalitarian governments, with anti-democratic tendencies, which encourages a politicized analysis of these situations, based on the semiotic peculiarities of cinema. As methodological support, we used the bibliographic survey and critical fortune about the early authors – Pessoa and Saramago –, as well as the watching of other Botelho´s films, to imbricate the theoretical perspective on the character with historical-critical elements brought by the filmmaker. We observe, as results and conclusions, the emphasis on Ricardo Reis' ambivalences as the director's strategy for the construction of an arguing look at the narrative, as well as the relations between fiction and society we can remark in the film.

Keywords: Ricardo Reis; fictional path; character; adaptation.