Brazil, 1910, and out of the stark, barren land, director Salles has brilliantly composed a visual poem in various shades of amber, ochre, and deep gold, the beauty of location composition often at odds with the stark story of revenge between families, a seemingly unending cycle of violent death unrelieved for peasant families.Moments of magic do happen, now and then, with visits from a traveling circus, from vivid pictures in a child's story book, from ascents into the skies from swings. The memorable faces of largely unknown actors will haunt you after the film ends; this is no film filled with special effects or easily-explained motivations, but a mythic tale with repercussive shocks; after one viewing with subtitles, one could turn them off and revel in the visuals, the music, and the strange, tragic finale.

Behind the Sun describes conflict between two families seen by boy called Pacu(awesome Ravi Lacerda). Sooner or later, each masculine family's member gets involved into conflict. Salles shows how irrational habits destroys human feelings. Pacu's father and his counterpart in 2nd family don't regret victims. Death of their sons is treated as custom which should be cultivated. Pacu dreams about normal life. Although he is a child, he doesn't want to take part in bloodthirsty, endless series of killings and revenges. Accidental encounter with circus - girl Clara changes his life. The book given by Clara shows him beauty of the world. Boy discovers that fate can be changed and depends of our will. Since then, he tries to persuade his older brother Tonho to leave the hell prepared by his own father and opponents waiting to kill him. Love born between Clara and Tonho changes his point of view. He realizes that normal world is not out of reach and can be reached easily....Walter Salles made an attempt to create masterpiece. Topics like sacrifice, endless duel, lost of dignity are appropriate factors to succeed. Message is clear. Sick pride removes spirit from our body. We give up ability to sympathy and love. Fake faith in God justifies mortal sins. When we discover what we did, it's to late to change the past. We loose everything essential and our shame cannot be erased.

This film is so beautiful, from the actors, the setting, the cinematography, the message...it was such a stunning and touching movie. A movie about vengence. A movie about love among family. Brotherly love. I felt myself transported and enraptured by this movie. More of a peek into time and space rather than watching a movie, really. To be utterly forgotten that I was watching this at home, from my VCR and feel as though I could taste the dust and feel the grind of the sugarcane mill...Who knew one could extract such sadness and anger from the sight of a bloodstained shirt, billowing in the wind as if it were dancing? Walter Salles did. The pace was deliberately slow. It's like reading a book very slowly, because you want to soak in every word and don't want to reach it's inevitable end. So if you'd rather watch a Kung Fu movie, fine.Wonderful performances by Rodrigo Santoro (yes, he's gorgeous, can we all get over that and take his performance for what it's really worth? Tell me his doe-eyed, innocent, 'boy trapped in a man's body' performance wasn't convincing, cus it was to me), Jose Dumont as the rigid and exhausted father, and especially the charming, darling young Ravi Ramos Lacerda.

Utter brilliance, the most beautiful movie I've seen since Amelie from Montmartre. How this movie is fairly unknown is a mystery to me.I cried repeatedly through the latter half of the movie. Not from the sadness in the story, but from the beauty of it. Not many movies leave such marks, me and the person I watched it with talked about it for hours after seeing it.I'm shocked to see this movie "only" got 7.5 here on IMDB. It deserves WAAY more. I would expect it to be around the 8.5 mark. 10/10 from me though, I'm blown away.