The Recomposition in Homem Comum by Carlos Nader

Abstract

This article analyzes Carlos Nader’s documentary Homem Comum (2015) from the perspective that it is a work that enacts a series of reworkings. The most explicit of these focuses on the appropriation achieved through the use of scenes from the 1955 film A Palavra (Ordet) by Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer. We will also address other types of reinvention produced by the Brazilian filmmaker, in a crucial element of documentary filmmaking—the interview/encounter—; in a relationship with painting, in the cinematic composition that creates triptychs; and, finally, through the very self-recomposition of the initial project that resulted in the documentary. As a theoretical framework, we will draw upon the thought of philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze, Baruch Spinoza, and Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as other authors such as Jonathan Crary and Paul Zumthor.