Locarno 2025: The Seasons (by Maureen Fazendeiro) | Review
A poetic and poignant portrait of Alentejo, Portugal, where time’s toll on the landscape calls for preservation, not only in the natural sense, but also in tradition and community.
Maureen Fazendeiro’s The Seasons (original title: As Estações) opens with a series of rocks with mysterious etches and carvings, denoting an erosion because of time and human involvement. Fazendeiro then transports us into a back of a truck driving to the setting of the film, Alentejo, Portugal, where she uses this natural resource as a time capsule, excavating and discovering the history of this region where communities, landscape, and correspondence shape the film’s hybrid form between the stories, myths, and lore of this historical resistant region.
Fazendeiro’s free flowing structure plays with time through various forms of storytelling to preserve this region’s rich history. The cohesive narrative, if there is one, revolves around a group of archaeologists locating, surveying, and restoring dolmens, megalithic tombs that are ubiquitous to this region. In parallel, narration of correspondence between German archaeologists, Georg and Vera Leisner during their research in this region for dolmens to their professor in Munich during the rise of WWII and the destruction of their home. The introduction of the political component is one of the many strands Fazendeiro investigates through time.
Although an observational film through long takes consisting of slow pans of the region and static framing to allow nature’s choreography through the composition, Fazendeiro’s interest lays in not only the archaeology aspect, but also the local stories of this region. She seamlessly transitions from first-hand account of stories of pastime to fictionalizing it. One story, about a man known as Churro, a revolutionary who resisted the fascist regime, is displayed through his wandering around the region, actualizing the life and lore of this region, rather than hearsay. Her formal qualities blends these mythological stories in fictional and non-fictional elements, adding to this region’s temporal theme and providing an authorship of these stories by the locals.
This landscape now becomes not only about the land itself, but of its people, traditions, stories, and more. There’s two main running image motifs that run throughout the film – a tree’s medusa-like branches extending out far and long, and the various dolmens. One can represent the present day, with all the natural and human distortions that have impacted it, causing its natural or unnatural beauty. The other, the dolmen, a remnant of the past that remains stoic and strong, artificially made, gives the region another landmark of history. How Fazendeiro uses time in relation to stones is incredibly thoughtful and assured.
In a brisk 82 minutes, the dense information never feels overly complicated due to Fazendeiro’s hold on her gentle pacing and rhythms. The camera lulls us into a meditative state, pondering and appreciating the beauty of the region, while uniquely transitioning us from one lore to another. It’s a no-brainer that the use of analog film goes hand in hand with the subject material, allowing material and nature coexist in a radiant delight. Fazendeiro’s perspective captures this region from a unique and selfless perspective; as the dolmen’s are being preserved, she is preserving the essence of Alentejo, Portugal.
