Viseu and Raymond revisited

In October 2021, I went to Viseu for the specific purpose of attending a concert. Disregarding the complexity of the countryside city, I thought (wrongly) that all I had to do was park in the city center and I’d be close to everything. The public space stood in the way of my arrogance as a big city dweller. I ran frantically through the streets of the historic center, but I arrived late at the Viriato Theatre [Teatro Viriato] and was prevented from entering. I had no choice but to wander around aimlessly, inhaling the autumn air that, near the mountains, cools out the lungs. I was still holding the ticket that, contradictorily, the theater employee handed me while she closed the doors [in my face]. At the time, I was in the process of watching and reviewing the film Caminhos Magnétykos [Magnetick Pathways] by Edgar Pêra, so I felt like Raymond, wandering through the city, made up by shadows, colors and mixed thoughts.

I returned to Viseu in November 2024, for professional reasons. Wandering around the non-place of the Polytechnic Institute [Instituto Politécnico], I couldn’t help but take a leap into the city center while on my lunch break. I wanted to confront the urban space after the hellish wanderings of 2021. Coincidentally, a few days later, RTP2 aired Magnetick Pathways. I, therefore, had returned to Viseu and to the movie within the same time frame. Neither the city was the same, nor had the movie provoked me the same sensations. The realization spurred me on a journey into the psychogeography (Sidaway, 2022) of a city and a film, which I now record in this essay.

I drive up to Viseu and the city gives me back its uniform progress: roundabouts (it all started here, if I remember correctly), shopping malls and business centers right at the city gates. The Polytechnic Institute is located both outside and inside the center. Only two steps away and next to a residential area. That’s why we have the usual bars, fast food restaurants and a certain de-characterization that populates some campuses around the country. Everyday life, however, is an invitation you can never resist, even if time is short. I start a quick tour of the streets, that are lined with autumn leaves, interpreting the signs of the city. There are abandoned houses and pleasant new ones. What seductions can this city contain? There are restaurants, which are either taverns or bistros, beckon with cosmopolitanism, based on the local products there available. Therefore, a gastronomic and cultural glocalization (Roudometof, 2016). There will be an authentic restaurant in the way, we just can’t see the full map yet. I sit down. Vegetarian dish, in the land of wine (the Dão), goat and pastries from Vouzela. I swallow and jump into the street. There’s the square next to the town hall, where I ran past three years ago. I almost let myself go through there, but that’s not my route and I’m late (once again). I’ll have to leave it for a later time. And so I go, through the Aquilino Ribeiro Park, where students from the school across the street are gathered in groups, smoking or dating. The space has been revamped with the name Parque da Cidade [City Park]. The whole structure of the park, however, is reminiscent of a public garden from the mid-20th century, with a stone fountain, granite paving and cast iron railings. Further research confirms the origin of the complex, which dates back to the Middle Ages, but that was born as a public park in 1955 (Direção-Geral do Património Cultural, 2011). Across the street, the Alves Martins Secondary School marks its 75th anniversary on its façade. Salazar’s quote still stands there: “The school is the sacred workshop of souls”. I almost sketched a smile. Such a statement lends itself to ambiguous jokes. But I stop just in time to remember the effects that the sacred office had on generations of students, which I fortunately narrowly escaped, so I then look away to the signs that come towards me.

The movie. Yes, Magnetick Pathways is an adaptation of two short stories (A Tragédia de D. Ramon, a.k.a. The Tragedy of Dom Ramon and O Conspirador, a.k.a. The Conspirator) by Branquinho da Fonseca, which are part of the collection that gives the film its title. I’ll start with the aforementioned phrase by Portugal’s old dictator and you’ll see why. The movie takes place in a dystopian future, in the city of Lisbon, with the country taken over by a dictatorial regime. Raymond sacrifices his young daughter and the principles of April’s Revolution for money. Catarina marries a capitalist tycoon who, in the middle of the wedding, receives a call from Donald. That specific one. Trump. From Magnetick Pathways, I remember Raymond’s wandering, as if in a dream, unwillingly, letting himself go, being taken over by the events and confusing these realities with his personal drama. In 2021, Covid was still leaving its marks and I found the scenes of drones forcing a curfew quite premonitory, for a movie released in 2018.

If I then mix my latest viewing in 2024 to these first impressions, it doesn’t look like the same film anymore. Nor is Viseu exactly the same city. There’s a group of dissidents that blow up the 25 de Novembro Bridge (a parody of the course of the Revolução dos Cravos), Fernando Pessoa saves Raymond from drowning. In 2024, Trump won the election again and I pay more attention to the main character when he invokes, within his rambling monologues, madness, lucidity, suffocation and cowardice, which is materialized in inaction. And, as if all of this weren’t enough, we have a slow populist rise, which, in Magnetick Pathways, is a ruler that is transformed into a cartoon figure, asking to be allowed to work. I don’t know at all what city this is, which I’m instantly visiting. The wide balconies of this building tell me that it could be a moving place. And any warm bakery, in any city in the world, is a shelter from the bitter cold of a new and unknown city. Raymond also seems more familiar. And Magnetick Pathways is less violent in its emotional stakes. Lisbon is a blur of lights and Viseu is preparing for another Christmas in its renewed austerity.

 

Text and images: Teresa Lima (CECS/Universidade do Minho)

 

Published in December 5th, 2024

 

References

Direção-Geral do Património Cultural. (2011). Monumentos. SIPA. http://www.monumentos.gov.pt/site/APP_PagesUser/SIPA.aspx?id=23881

Pêra, E. (Director). (2018). Caminhos Magnétykos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzIWEd_OFhk

Roudometof, V. (2016). Theorizing glocalization: Three interpretations1. European Journal of Social Theory, 19(3), 391–408. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431015605443

Sidaway, J. D. (2022). Psychogeography: Walking through strategy, nature and narrative. Progress in Human Geography, 46(2), 549–574. https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325211017212

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