Customer Reviews

Fados

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I preordered this dvd in August and it has been well worth waiting for. I have been listening to fado since my grandmother sang it to me in my craddle 61 years ago. I have been lucky enough to have known personally some of the great names of fado, like Amalia, Lucilia do Carmo, her son Carlos and Argentina Santos. Camane I heard for the first time some fifteen years ago when he walked in and did an imprompto set at Sr. Vinho at 2 o'clock on a Saturday morning. A year ago I spent my 60th birthday singing "fado vadio"(amatuer fado)with old friends in a small club in Bairro Alto in Lisbon. So when I speak of Fado, I know whereof I speak, even if I happen to be speaking English and not Portugues at the moment.

I can already hear the "purists" who will watch this film. "This is not fado because it is not traditional". I am old enough to remember when they said the same things about Amalia, Lucilia and Carlos because each brought their own interpretation to the fado they sang. Fado is a living art form. Not a relick to be preserved untouched in a museum. Carlos Saura has brought us "living Fado" with new and creative variations of music and dance. I hope those who already know fado and those who have yet to experience its magic will experience this film.
Paul Vieira of Greenville, RI and Lisbon, Portugal.

This is a wonderful introduction to Portugese Fado. It has its serious and light sides, the old and the new, by famous and lesser known performers...all of it nicely presented. I've had the pleasure of seeing Maritza in person twice...she has unique star quality along with a passionate voice.
Settle back with some wine, your dreams and memories, and enjoy!

I love Fado,and Morna, and Flamenco, and Bossa Nova, and Samba... the list can go on and on. I might not be very educated in all of these genres, being born in Azerbaijan and living in California, but I know great music when I hear it. The Fados by Carlos Saura is plain incredible. I first saw it on a big screen, and that helps, too :) Some previous reviewers complained that Mexican and Brazilian musicians were included and some great ones from Portugal and Cape Verde were not. It doesn't bother me that he found a room for Lila Downs from Mexico/USA (I love her, and she was fantastic) and skipped Cesaria Evora (my favourite of all times). This film isn't an encyclopedia of Fado and related styles, nor it is a historical textbook. It's Saura's artistic view on it. And Saura is a great artist. I ordered the DVD as soon as I got home after the screening. I watched it several times since. The variety of styles within the film makes it rich. I don't care for hip-hop or rap or pop at all, but in the film those styles were so organically woven, they were fine. Don't expect from the film to be all-inclusive, comprehensive history of Fado. Do expect to be taken to a world of enchanted artistic vision of Saura, of incredible musicians of his choosing. Trust him!
And as for the visual side of it - it's stunning, do expect to be inspired. I was.
Fados De Carlos Saura

Every time I watch and listen to Fados by Carlos Saura, I peel back another layer, and enjoy the music and dance more deeply.
It's a national treasure (Portugal) which is a bit of history on parade....from the first Portuguese sailors to ply the 7 seas, throughout the colonies and the arc of their histories, to Brazilian & African artists, rappers, the whole gambit, alpha to omega, of Portuguese soul music & magic.
...that I never knew existed until I saw this movie.
It makes me ashamed maybe, sad certainly, to come from such a stiff, heartless culture, military industrial northern European, with so little spontaneous music directly from the heart, so little emotional range or skill. The extemporaneous free spirit of these songs, freshness, heartfelt, raw, unabashed, is rare in our culture. What a discovery.
Hope it grows on you like it did on me....try it.

Each vignette unfolds like a painting, and the music is unforgettable. It finally showed me the different facets of fado, the contemporary and the progressive. For someone more conversant with Amalia, this was exhilarating. A whole new musical world has now opened up for me to explore. Carlos Saura is a genius and what he has done here to explore, expose and elucidate the past and living glory of fado in the confines of a studio - with light, colors, mirrors - is extraordinary.

I thought Saura's films on tango and flamenco were a bit too stilted, somewhat like museum exhibits of beautiful butterflies under glass. But this film on fado really breathes and moves with true life. There are so many unforgettable moments - Carlos do Carmo's face as worn and melancholic as the Lisbon street scenes behind him, Caetano Veloso's tremulous falsetto, archival footage of Amalia Rodrigues, Mariza's guttural wails, the musically dueling youths at the end. Wow!

I had high hopes for this movie because I love fado and have been listening for many years. This film is an interesting overview of a lot of different styles of fado and the movie does make it's point that fado is widespread and varied depending on what part of the world it comes from. To me the old school is still where the great fado is happening - the place where fado really shines. There are some good performances here, and the director does a lot with a limited budget and palette, but the lighting, set design, and cinematography are really not as evocative as they could be.

I recently saw a live flamenco performance by Paco Pena (Royce Hall UCLA 2009) it was as spare a set as one could ever imagine, but it was beautifully lit and absolutely magical. This movie does not touch the potential for drama and effect that can be achieved with good lighting and simple set design. There are some interesting video background effects, at times they work, at times they are just distracting or flat. The lens focal lengths used are sometimes just a mistake.

Cinematic shortcomings detract from the real/potential drama of the performances. I found it better to just listen to the film rather than watch. It's just kind of flat looking even when it tries to achieve visual depth and drama. This is a good film to rent or watch as a download from net-flix... but it is definitely not an "owner". check it out somewhere on the web ( like youtube which has trailers and segments) before you drop cash on this one, or buy a cheap and or used copy.

There's a lot of dance action - some works and some really does not work well at all - some of the dancing is not even in time with the music. The musical part of this movie that really bothers me is how uneven this is with regard to soul and depth in fado. There's a melange of new, pop, and hip-hop styles of fado. Among this lot of new Fado the hip-hop is most interesting but I'm not really into rap-fado. I can get rap anywhere... I don't need it in my fado. I like some rap done well. I'm open to it as an evolutionary thread of new fado, but it's still not a direction that brings a lot of joy. Great fado should grip my soul - or at least that's what I like and look for - and the rap version doesn't engage me. Even worse the "pop" versions - pop is lite - saccharin - that's not what moves me in fado. The pop stuff just lacks authenticity and depth. I get that there's light and heavy fado. But fado should be from the heart and the pop stuff just falls flat - false manufactured sentimentality without the spirit or the real passion.

If you want an education in breadth of fado, if you want a sampler of new and old fado, if you want the pop AND the classic, then this is going to be ok for you. I stress the "OK" aspect but not the "great". I still say rent or stream this before you buy it. I am so happy that I did not buy this dvd, I would have been very disappointed. I watched it as a streaming download from my monthly service - it's perfect for that.

I'm not here to defend the idea of a pure or rigid standard of what fado should be. I think this movie is about how fado is not restrained by classical notions of purity, but there are better more exciting and engaging ways to execute that concept. If you prefer a more classical style of fado you're not going to be wowed by this movie or the soundtrack. My suggestion would be to track down the artists you really like, get their albums, and enjoy the classic beauty of the best the old school has to offer.

The movie spends too much time on music from the former Portuguese colonies (which may have the same ancestry as fado but is no closer to it than the bossa nova is). The movie also includes music that has absolutely nothing in common with fado except that it is Portuguese. An example of the latter is 'Grandola Vila Morena,' the outstanding Jose Afonso song, literally the trigger for the 1974 revolution. This lack of focus leaves out too many giants of the past (e.g., Maria Teresa de Noronha) as well as newcomers (e.g., Aldina Duarte). However, the director has room for Lila Downs (Mexican) and Caetano Veloso (Brazilian). Absurd! I found it disconcerting to hear fado, that expression of the Portuguese soul, interpreted with a thick Brazilian accent. To make things worse, the choreography is pretentious and distracting. Fado is only marginally visual, so I'd advise sticking to one of several excellent CD compilations obtainable through Amazon: "Fado the Exquisite Passion," "The Rough Guide to Fado," "Great Voices of Fado," or "Queens of Fado."

Carlos Saura obviously loves the music, and Mariza and others deliver good performances, but how can one even entertain the idea of doing a film on the history of Fado without Cesaria Evora?

Evora's tours in the past few years has made her one of the biggest names in Fado and has introduced the music to millions. And yet, neither mention of her, nor archival or new footage? That's like doing the early history of rock 'n roll without mentioning Elvis.

For that reason, 3 stars only.