December 31, 2014 -- This long, slow, rambling documentary self-portrait of filmmaker Joaquim Pinto and his friends and dogs explores nature, society and existential questions, often at a snail's pace. But there are enough bursts of visual imagination and literate thought-provoking ideas in the narration to make it worthwhile for the serious film fanatic. It is a meditation on nature, religion, philosophy, politics, existence and life.

The film opens with a closeup of a slug, which moves at the same speed as a snail, and the camera doesn't move, and the scene isn't cut until the snail moves clear out the shot. There is another scene with a closeup of a dragonfly which seems even longer. There are similar scenes where we see Pinto's expressionless face for long periods of time. This film is both long (16 minutes under three hours) and the pace is very slow, too.

Things do happen, however. Pinto fights a brush fire at one point, and there is a sex scene (homosexual) as well, but mostly, it is a lot of farm related work, and lots and lots of shots of big dogs. Pinto has been living with HIV for many years. He also is fighting a Hepatitis C (HCV) infection. The film was shot during a year when Pinto was participating in an experimental drug trial involving interferon, but the film includes many scenes of other parts of his life, too.

Pinto explains in one of many voice over narrations in the film that his mind wanders because of the drugs he is taking. He explains that because of the interferon and other drugs, it feels like he has to will himself to breathe, he has to will his hand to move, and so on. Nothing comes automatically anymore. This becomes like an existential theme. He has to want to eat, want to walk. Everything comes down to will. “I have to want to want,” Pinto says.

Pinto and his partner, Nuno Leonel, spend much of their time planting and watering trees and other plants on some land near a small village where they live in Portugal. Pinto says he started growing his own food when he lived for seven years in the Azores.

Pinto's mind, and movie, wanders from past to present to future. He says, “Childhood memories. The past without memory. The recent past, present, between here and there.” From a passage in St. Augustine's “Confessions,” he reads, “How do we measure present time, since it has no extension? It is measured while it passes, but when it has passed it is not measured, for then there is nothing that could be measured. But whence and how does it pass but from the future? Which way, save through the present? Whither, but into the past? Therefore, from what is not yet, through what has no length, it passes into what is now no longer.”

Pinto wonders about this break between past, present and future, “Who can remember the London Debt Agreement in 1953, when half the German debt was canceled and the rest was set out in a prudent payment package?” Pinto asks, and “How the ‘economic miracle’ started.” Now that the Germans are in control of the European economy, they advocate no such mercy for the Greeks, who are now rebelling against German imposed economic “austerity” policies.

There are some imaginative video sequences in the movie, and some animation, too, along with some thought-provoking observations on religion, philosophy, politics and the nature of existence. While it is a long, slow, slog of a film, there are some gems to be found in it. This film rates a B. This is in Portuguese and other languages with English subtitles.

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