Movie review by Anupama Chopra: Central Station has 'emotional voltage'

Central Station is the story of a retired school teacher who writes letters for illiterate people at Rio de Janeiro’s central railroad station.

A director with two small art house releases on his resume. A celebrated theatre actress. A penniless nine-year old shoeshine boy who had never seen a film before.

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This unlikely threesome created a film that created waves around the world, winning two Oscar nominations, a Golden Globe award for best foreign language film, a BAFTA award and the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, where Central Station premiered in 1998.

Central Station is the story of a retired school teacher who writes letters for illiterate people at Rio de Janeiro’s central railroad station. Dora, played by Fernanda Montenegro, is hard-edged, joyless and deeply cynical.

She spends the day listening to people’s innermost fears and fantasies but she doesn’t bother to mail the letters. Instead, in the evening she sits with a friend and ridicules the strangers who have opened their hearts to her, often just tossing the letters into a drawer.

Against her instincts, Dora gets entangled with Josué, an orphan whose mother had Dora write two letters to Josué’s father, minutes before she is killed in a bus accident.

Dora embarks on a difficult journey to reunite Josué with his father and in the process, discovers her own humanity.

Salles locates the beauty in ordinary lives. When the film finished, I wept with Dora and Josué. But Salles also left me with hope and faith. At the heart of Central Station is the staggering performance by Montenegro.

Dora evolves imperceptibly into a woman whose tragedy sears our hearts. What’s remarkable is that Vinicius de Oliveira, the non-actor who plays Josué, matches her brilliance. His face brims with intensity and a remarkable honesty.

Central Station, has, what Salles described as, ‘emotional voltage.’ Like all great art, it shifts something inside you. Find it.