Review: The past looms large in My Grandfather's Demons

When we meet Rosa, she's a diligent cog in the capitalist machine. Always meeting her quotas, rising ever higher in the company. In fact, she's achieved the highest honor possible at her job: the rank of Golden Pig, symbolized by a small holographic (and yes, golden) pig that floats above her workstation. It's a symbol of dedication, a source of envy for her coworkers (especially her  work neighbor who is only a giraffe...*shudder*). As her grandfather puts it in one of his numerous letters to her, she's always on the treadmill of life. Always on the go, striving for more, pausing her life when her boss texts her a last-minute deadline. Nothing is more important.

We learn that Rosa, in the midst of all this girlboss-ing, has lost touch with her grandfather, the one who raised her when her mom left for the city back in the day. She finds Christmas postcards from the last few years that she forgot to send. Then she realizes she forgot to let him know about her new (obviously posher) address. And then, on the brink of maybe reaching out, maybe reconnecting, she gets the inevitable call: he's dead.

From the start, Nuno Beato's My Grandfather's Demons (Os Demónios do Meu Avô) has a slick look to it. There's an almost painterly sheen to everything, with smooth geometry and lots of polish. But something amazing happens as Rosa returns to the small town of her upbringing to reckon with the fallout of her grandfather's death. The film undergoes an aesthetic transformation as she takes her first steps in the dirt that reconnects her to the past. The slick animation peels and crackles away, revealing the claymation animation that will carry us through the rest of the film. Immediately, everything takes on more texture, weight, and feeling. It's a brilliant, beautiful moment in a film that has many, and it was then that I leaned in -- Oh! -- and really felt the movie get its hooks in me.

Rosa's transition to life back in town is a rough one. Suddenly, she isn't the picture of perfection, the overachiever, the always winner. She fails in so many of her attempts to right the wrongs of her grandfather. He was a stubborn man, often selfish and solitary. She's shunned by many in town just because she's related to him. Her attempts to help and make things right aren't met with enthusiasm by most. Of course, she's not exactly operating out of the goodness of her heart, looking down on the townsfolk as undeserving and uncultured. 

But as she learns more about her grandfather -- both through dream sequence flashbacks featuring the eponymous demons, based on the small figurines her grandfather figured to grapple with the people in his life, and the ways that he wronged them, as well as the testimonies of her neighbors -- her heart softens. Her pace slows. Her attempts widen to include other people, especially a boy named Chico who is just absolutely adorable and so full of energy. As much as she's working to make up for what her grandfather did, she's also making amends for herself. Like her mother, she left. She never came back. She fell out of touch. She looks down on this place, these people, a way of life that has become foreign to her, that she was so ready to escape. Now she sees it in through a different lens, and her go-getter attitude becomes an asset as she tries to unravel the mystery of how to fix things (most notably, how to return water to the town, as her grandfather's curse many years ago made the town's supply run dry).

There are many lovely messages baked into this film: an appreciation of nature, reminders to live in the moment, calls for community and care. Rosa tries to be a better person than her grandfather was: gentler, slower to anger, more connected to the people around her. Even her hair shows this arc: the dyed blonde gradually grows out until it's only the tips of her hair. She's returning to a place of authenticity, even when that place is messier, rougher, maybe a bit harder to maintain.

Perhaps the most important thing I took away can be found right in the title. We all have our demons, ones that we're aware of and ones we aren't. Some that we face and some we hide from. Some that haunt us and can never be shaken. Here, Rosa takes on her grandfather's demons, some of which mirror her own. The past and the present collide and entangle, and must be fought through and understood to move forward in a meaningful way. And there's beauty in the battle. As hard as they can be to look at, those demons are a part of who we are, something we can and should face, something that might even help us. There's a moment late in the film that really embodies this, one I won't spoil here, that made me gasp and then had the tears flowing. One of those images I won't ever forget. One of those reasons I love movies (and especially animated movies) so much.