Ghosts in the House of Gvea: Daydreaming and forgetting in Santiago,

a feature documentary by Joo Moreira Salles

Catarina Mouro PhD in Film

When cinema was invented it had to struggle to become recognized as an art form,
overcoming the idea that it was simply a technique. Filmmakers were immediately
drawn by its capacity to manipulate reality and transform it. Dreams became obviously a
source of inspiration. But if we analyse film history and its bibliography we realise
however that dreams have been conventionally exiled in the country of fiction. There is
hardly no mention of dreams in documentary and this is probably due to its problematic
relationship with reality. How can we trace a dream?
Lately documentary and its quest to portray subjectivity, has felt more and more the need
to represent the immaterial, the memory, the past and the fantasy Many documentaries
have used mechanisms related to memory as a way of portraying this inner subjective
world, but there is still very little reference to dream as a source for this kind of
representation.
In this presentation I wish to analyze some scenes in the feature-length documentary
Santiago and argue how memory connected to dream can play an important role in the
depiction of the inner worlds of characters and director. I want to articulate this analysis
with the concepts of memory and dream explored by Paul Ricoeur and Henri Bergson,
namely the idea of an unconscious memory, and the way past only comes into action
through the interpretation of the present. For Ricoeur a memory is inseparable of its
narrative and interpretation, and in this narrative, forgetting and dreams have a role to
play. Ultimately the film Santiago is a journey through the subconscious of both the
director and his main character and finally a journey through our own sub-conscious as
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spectators.
But first let me introduce Santiago, the film. In 1992 Joo Moreira Salles, a young
Brazilian director at the time, decided to use the left-overs of film-stock from
advertisements he used to direct and produce with his brother Walter Salles, to make a
film about his old retired butler Santiago. Santiago, born in Italy and an emigrant in
South America since his childhood, was the butler of the family Salles for nearly 30 years
in the famous House of Gvea in Rio de Janeiro. This house represented the 50s in Rio,
when it was the capital of Brazil. It also represented a life of opulence in the context of
dictatorship. The main idea of the film according to the director was to reveal Santiago as
a picturesque character, who sees himself as the holder of the houses memories.
In the 90s, Rio de Janeiro became a violent place, Brasilia was now the countrys capital,
and Rio lost its identity. The house became an alter ego for the city, a drifting place,
ditched by history. Santiago was to become the voice for this memory, an abstraction
embedded with nostalgia.
But when Joo began editing he realised this conceptual approach didnt work at all, the
film was missing something he could not identify at the time, and after many attempts he
decided to abandon the film to come back to it only 13 years later.
In 2005 when Joo decides to come back to the lost film he tries first of all to identify
what went wrong, what was missing, what was there that had been dismissed. By doing
this he is embarking on a kind of psycho-analytical journey through the rushes. This new
attempt to sculpt the rushes and to find a new sub-text, in order to transform them into
something meaningful and truthful to him and his character, is very similar to a process
of dream-working: The process by which the unconscious produces a dream and recalls it
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the following morning through the articulation of a narrative. Likewise, Joo had to dig
into the rushes to extract from them new meanings, using metaphors and other symbolic
forms, in a constant process of self-examination and self-reflexivity.
Here lies in my view the first layer of dream in this film Santiago.
In one of his essays, Raymond Bellour introduces the notion of Blocage Symbolique
referring to the content of films, which is not perceived immediately, which is hidden, or
disguised. He also compares the mechanism of oblivion in Dream to the oblivion in Film.
Sometimes there are images we cannot recall, others that we thought we saw but can no
longer see , others that we transform into something different. I believe that in the shoot
and the first stage of editing, Joo blocked many things.
One of the approaches taken by Joo and his editors in this second attempt to make sense
of the rushes, was to include all the off-screen moments of the film, or moments before
the clapper-board. Sounds with no image, images with no sound, all were revealed.
1st clip: 130
By revealing these Back-stage moments, theses accidents like Joo calls them, he
realised how much the film was a consequence of the relationship established between
him and Santiago. By acknowledging this and accepting to be in the film Joo manages to
overcome the blocage felt in the fist stage. Using a self-reflexive approach to the film
Joos dream becomes present: the dream he made for his first film and the interpretation
of this dream in this second film.
But there is a second layer of dream in this film regarding Santiago, that Joo had to
reveal and understand in order to enter Santiagos inner world.

Some years after the shoot in 1992 Santiago died and left Joo his most precious
treasure: a compilation of hundreds of note books, 3.000 pages of hand-written stories
about the European Aristocracy since the Roman Empire, which Santiago faithfully
copied from different documents from different libraries in many different languages.
This was a work of a life time. In between these tales, Santiago uses metaphors and
explores his unconscious to talk about himself.
2nd clip: 111
By interpreting Santiagos dream, Joo is using his authority as a director, he is once
again controlling the film, leaving little space for Santiago and the spectator, and yet we
can argue that this moment in the film is there for another reason. By emphasizing this
moment of Santiagos diary, Joo is telling us that dreams are definitely a door to the
inner world of the characters. And by interpreting Santiagos dream, Joo is once again
stating and recognizing how much this film is his dream about Santiago, his voice, and
not the voice of Santiago.
This is therefore a journey to many pasts and many recollections. These different pasts
become present through a work of interpretation and narrative, but also a work of
forgetting and a work of dreaming, as we will see.
Paul Ricoeur mentions in his book Memory, History and Forgetting the notion of
reserve of forgetting which connects with the idea of finding the voice of the
unconscious in our memory. By reserve of forgetting he means the pleasure of recalling
what one once saw, heard, felt, learned, acquired. This happens when a neural trace
disappears in opposition to a physical trace. The recalling produces an image, a memoryimage.
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When Joo comes back to the rushes 13 years later he realises he has forgotten his initial
story, that many bits of sound and images have disappeared, but more than this the very
initial purpose and idea of the film had disappeared. This moment of forgetfulness of
oblivion towards the film, his childhood and the deceased Santiago is similar to a feeling
of mourning, aging and death. And yet, for Ricoeur it is this act of forgetting that is
essential to the recalling. If a memory returns it is because it was forgotten.
In his book Matter and memory Henri Bergson argues that memories which are not yet
conscious or havent yet been recollected have to be taken on board the same we
recognize the value of things we cannot perceive. I believe both Ricoeur and Bergson are
talking about a past which is part of the present but which we are still not conscious
about, which is still forgotten in a place, but to which we can have access through
recollection. In order to reach this place Bergson says we must carry ourselves into the
region of dreams beyond the realm of action. A human being who should dream his life
instead of living it would no doubt thus keep before his eyes at each moment the infinite
multitude of the details of his past history". He adds we must have the power to value
the useless, we must have the will to dream () According to Bergson the images stored
up in the spontaneous memory, in opposition to an active memory, are dream-images
which appear and disappear independently of our will; and which hide all our past.
Paul Ricoeur concludes by mentioning Bergsons notion of a contemplative memory
when trying to evoke dreams and all which is latent in our past, a kind of thinking at the
limit and relating it to his notion of reserve of forgetting. He ends by saying that
forgetting in this sense implies a work of mourning and letting the unconscious reveal
itself, letting dreams come to surface as a way of making sense of the past through the
present.
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As a conclusion and coming back to the film Santiago, I believe that despite its analytical
approach, the film has managed to cross the thresholds of consciousness, in the words
of Bergson, to enter the life of dreams.
By revealing his inner world as a director in trouble and his false attempts to represent
Santiago in the past, acknowleding his incapacity to transcend the hierarchy between him
and his butler. Joo manages to give a new space to Santiagos inner world, bringing the
past to the present, and questioning his ability to forget, remember and dream. Joo is
hoping that he can now retract from his initial point of view. Still we are always looking
at Santiago through Joos eyes, even when Santiago is desperately trying to have some
control over the film. It is the dream-like atmosphere of the film that dictates this. We
mustnt fool ourselves; we are always in Joos dream.
At the end one is still left with some doubts. What else has Joo concealed from his
rushes? I believe this is intentional. This is an open film, a film which ultimately could be
endlessly reedited, the same way as a dream can be re-dreamt, revealing at each time
different layers of memory and meaning. In some way the voice of the film transcended
the voice of director and character, and this is what makes it such a powerful, inspiring
film.
If we still have time I will leave you with a final scene of the film, a moment
when Joo has finally allowed space for Santiagos interpretation of his own dream.
3rd clip: 1 min