COMBOIO DE SAL E ACUCAR (TRAIN OF SALT AND SUGAR)
DIRECTOR: Licinio Azevedo
CAST: Matama Joaquim, Melanie de Vales Rafael, Thiago Justino, Antonio Nipita, Sabina Fonseca
CLASSIFICATION: 13 V
RUNNING TIME: 92 minutes
RATING: 4 stars (out of 5)
THERESA SMITH
The camera pans over people at a train station. Cautiously greeting each other, they settle on the platform for a long wait, though the train appears ready to leave.
When a soldier in battle fatigues addresses them, admonishing them they are not being forced to board the train, or even paying, so they better listen to his orders, no one gets excited. Resignation is etched on every face. Except that of a young woman who introduces herself as Rosa (De Vales Rafael, pictured) a nurse on the way to her first job.
Rosa befriends the pragmatic MrsMariamu (Fonseca), to her advantage because the older woman looks out for her on what turns out to be a journey through an outer circle of hell. This is northern Mozambique, 1988, and the train is going from Nampula to Malawi. Some of the passengers are taking bags of salt from the coast to exchange for sugar, which they will then sell back home. If they make it. The train inches its way along because the track is sabotaged every few kilometres and the soldiers on board are constantly engaging in firefights with hidden guerrillas. Passengers duck for cover as the bullets fly, the dead get buried along the tracks and the train moves on.This movie takes its cue from a book written by the director, Azevedo, and adapted into a screenplay with the help of Teresa Pereira.
Azevedo adopts a matter-of-fact style to tell the story, not idealising the violence. It is an oddly mesmerising glimpse into a reality unlike anything you could imagine. Azevedo keeps the tension ratcheted fairly high, but this film is less about the horrific action of sudden skirmishes and more about the human relationships and how people still show their humanity even at the edge of their known civilisation.
Two soldiers start vying for Rosa’s attention in different ways, showing us three faces of the Mozambican civil war – she is an idealist, ready for change, one soldier is an educated realist with squashed dreams and the other is a war-scarred vet steeped in violence.
The depth of cruelty is matched by innate kindness, the beautiful wide open sky is mirrored by a broken landscape and the train slowly cuts through these jarring dichotomies as a tiny bit of civility cutting across the land. – If you liked Terra Sonâmbula (Sleepwalking Land), you will like this.