José Filipe Costa’s newest film, Our Father – The Last Days of a Dictator [+lire aussi :
critique
interview : José Filipe Costa
fiche film], dramatises an episode in Portuguese history centred on the eponymous time of one of the country’s most notorious dictators, António de Oliveira Salazar. However, the film is elevated wholly beyond its historical context, with Filipe Costa crafting an eerie reminder of how hateful rhetoric and worldviews return in frightening, mutated forms.

At IFFR, where the film enjoyed its world premiere in the Big Screen Competition, Cineuropa sat down with the Portuguese filmmaker to discuss the minutiae in the characters’ quotidian acts of violence and how many of the themes he depicts have come full circle.

Cineuropa: How much of your film is fictionalised versus drawing from accounts of Salazar’s final years? What elements of the story were you most interested in keeping true to life?
José Filipe Costa: There were a lot of sources. I started to develop the film based on the diary of his personal doctor. It started out as a story that nobody knows, also in terms of human behaviour within the context of a fascist regime. It’s very interesting to study these characters. A lot of it was about the everyday life of fascism, not the big picture – the small things, and the relationships of power between the maids, the housekeeper and the dictator. Also, it was about how they could stage this kind of [illusion that Salazar is still in power] for such a long time.

The character I keep thinking about is Maria, Salazar’s housekeeper, as she is most intimately connected with the power dynamics of the residence.
There is a book on the housekeeper, but she didn’t like to be photographed or filmed at all. She’s a very particular character because she was illiterate before coming to Lisbon to work with Salazar. For me, one of the most violent scenes with her is not when the housekeeper is beating the maids; it’s when one of the maids is obliged – we don’t see it, but there is an ellipsis – to cut off her braids and give them to [Salazar], and she cries.

This banality of evil that we see depicted in the film, along with many of the conversations we witness, also comments heavily on how political tides are shifting today.
It was just terrible actually watching the film. I started to say, “Oh my God, this idea of ‘order’ and ‘cleaning’…” There are these two slogans used by the Portuguese right wing today. They are both related to the ideas of the fascist regime, like “cleaning the country”, or slogans about bringing order to the nation or putting the country on the right path. It’s something that started to resonate with the film. When I started to write the film five years ago, I was not aware of what would happen [in Portuguese politics], so it started out a bit like, “Oh, this is an interesting episode in the life of Salazar that no one knows about.” But when I saw the film [the other day], it became too relevant. I really didn’t like watching it.

I didn’t realise this particular episode was not very well known in Portuguese history.
It is not taught in schools. I think the film says a lot about power and also about the complex character that Salazar was, because he was always saying, “I’m not very interested in power.” There is a line where he says, “I would love to be in the vineyards. I would love to be in the countryside.” That’s factual – he said that to Christine Garnier, a French writer who visited him [and wrote a book]. [It was all about] the beautiful life of the countryside, and how it was pure and innocent, being with the animals and plants. He really loved that. On the other hand, he didn’t want to leave his power [behind]. That’s the paradox.

You incorporate a number of these animal metaphors and pieces of symbolism into Salazar’s life.
It was very much connected with a certain idea of Portugal. I think Salazar loved the idea of Portugal being a big village. He didn’t like Russia at all – it was a communist enemy, enemy number one. But he also didn’t like US culture or capitalism, because that meant disillusion and urban behaviours. The idea of having big cities and big industrial places is very far from what he dreamed about. There is a kind of idea that life in the village is very traditional, with a family consisting of a husband, a wife and children. There is the idea that this is the “normal life”, real life, pure life. There is a sentence where he says something like, “The Portuguese are very docile. We know who they are better than they do. We can protect them from themselves.”

It’s a very paternalistic attitude related to preserving provinciality.
Yes. There was also this hen house, which represented the village as invading the space of São Bento. That’s the official residence of the prime minister, which is still there and is used today. They changed the interiors, but we filmed the exteriors at São Bento. The interiors were filmed in other spaces but were very similar to what we imagined because we had some pictures.