Still, he thinks nothing of defending a communist repairman (Joao Vicente), who works for him even if their political ideologies are at obvious odds the man respects Joao by working hard and Joao believes that deserves his respect in return.Īudiences not quite up on their Portuguese history won’t have any major issues following the main thrust of the action, as the focus is always on how the political impacts the personal, so the history of the Fernandes family takes precedence over the history of Portugal.
Instead, he’s a man of flesh and blood who is perhaps not always friendly but who tries to be fair and pragmatic, who likes to fly low - he prefers to stay out in the countryside rather than hang out with Portugal’s elite in Lisbon - and who is surprisingly tolerant of change, even if it is clear he might not quite anticipate what the Carnation Revolution might bring about. What is fascinating is that Guedes, credited with the screenplay alongside novelist-journalist-screenwriter Rui Cardoso Martins and French scripter Gilles Taurand ( Wild Reeds, Farewell My Queen), never makes Joao either a one-note villain or a rich idiot. (It isn’t much of a spoiler to say that that conflict is now referred to as the Angolan War of Independence.) Not that that necessarily makes things easier for the family, as the feature’s first half chronicles the government’s increasingly desperate attempts to get Fernandes to publicly declare his support for the war in Angola, which they are “sure to win,” as the Minister explains. He is married to the chain-smoking and always beautifully coiffed Leonor (Sandra Faleiro), who is not only the mother of their children but whose father is one of the Generals of the regime. The owner of this vast land mass is Joao Fernandes (Albano Jeronimo), a solitary man with a frequently clenched square jaw. This would make it one of the biggest properties in Europe (the screenplay was inspired by the sprawling Barroca d’Alva estate). They own almost 35,000 acres of land on the southern banks of the Tagus River, the minister is told by his chief of staff, much of it used for crops such as wheat and rice.
An early scene sees a minister of the far-right Estado Novo government in 1973 - so after the death of Salazar but before the Revolution - being briefed on the Fernandes family and their property.
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