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| A still from Sombras Brancas. |
Storytelling in Sombras Brancas: Brain Ischemia in the Life of Portuguese Writer José Cardoso Pires
-Dr. Brian Mendonça
Abstract
My paper attempts to unpack Sombras Brancas / White Shadows (2023) - a documentary film made by Portuguese film director and producer Fernando Vendrell on the life of the Portuguese writer José Cardoso Pires (1925-1998).
José Cardoso Pires - along with Nobel Prize winner for literature José Saramago - is regarded as one of the greatest Portuguese writers of the 20th century. What is interesting is his descent into delirium when he was diagnosed with brain ischemia in 1995. In this period of profound disorientation José Cardoso Pires suffered from aphasia, memory loss, and symptoms akin to Alzheimer’s disease. All he can see are white shadows. Out of this experience he published De Profundis (1997) at 72.
Sombras Brancas recreates this moment in the life of José Cardoso Pires and provides us with a compelling documentary highlighting this little-known aspect of his life. The film oscillates back and forth from the past to the present in the persona of the younger José Cardoso Pires as he romances his future wife, nurse Edite; and his frequenting the bars of Lisbon - to the pathetic state he is reduced to as he lies on the hospital bed. The film provides a gerontological narrative of his incapacity, which becomes a butt of ridicule for the inmates of the ward.
Using techniques like montage, mise-en-scéne, camera angles and multiple shots, warm and hostile colour, pleasant and fearful sounds, the film enables us to understand the aporia of a writer and takes us into that terrifying liminal space which only he can inhabit because of his mental condition.
Keywords: José Cardoso Pires, Sombras Brancas, Portugal, Fernando Vendrell, brain ischemia
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