Ordinary Review I didn't know anything about this documentary before seeing it. For me this is strange because I often read many reviews or at least take a glance at reviews, see the casting, make sure that the film is something I want to see. I have never even read but one of Jose Saramago's work -- a short story titled The Tale of the Unknown Island. But what a beautiful tale it was! It was only because I loved that story and that I read this was a documentary detailing the last few years of his life, that I decided to see it. I didn't know that it was really him on screen, and that it was really his wife.It's a beautiful documentary. There is no plot, of course. There are moments though which happen naturally and which pile together, and the truth of those moments makes this a pleasure to see. Moments like Saramago waiting for his laptop to open up, and that sound of Windows welcome screen. Moments where he climbs a mountain. Sick moments when he is frail and feels he is closest to death. All throughout, the small gestures he shares with his wife, cupping the back of her head, ruffling her hair as they walk. This documentary is said to be a love story and I can see why. There are no long and passionate kisses, no sex, no convoluted chase as he tries to "win" her over -- instead, this is a story of two people in love twenty years after their being together. The small ways in which they know each other through and through. The nightmares he has when he thinks he will die -- they are not about death, or fear of death/retribution -- Saramago is famously and outspokenly an atheist -- but rather calling out for Pilar, and being unable to reach to her. For a Nobel prize winner, it can be expected how busy Saramago and his wife's schedules are. Yet what bothered me at first seeing this documentary was the kind of distaste he had for his fans. One of the scenes in the beginning were of Pilar sorting through his mail and tearing up most of the fan mail which they get in bulk nearly every week while making sarcastic comments about them. He hates being photographed or autographing yet goes again and again to events which he knows will require that of him. To me it felt somehow ungrateful, as these readers were responsible for his work being known, published, loved and if he was unable to participate in the publicity he could simply decline coming to those events. Of course I can understand as well the need for his personal life, his private life. Nevertheless, the fact that this sort of elitist sentiment was so overt in the documentary balanced out the image of him. He isn't heralded as saint -- he's just a man.The documentary also chronicles the process of him writing The Elephant's Journey one of the last books he wrote before his death in 2010, and the metaphor of the elephant whose journey would have passed by, anonymously, if he hadn't written about it felt to me a metaphor for his own life, for his own passing which would have gone by without event if it wouldn't have been for his work. Yet he is humble too, and reached international acclaim when he was in his sixties. I liked: Some beautiful quotes. Saramago often spoke of himself as a confirmed "pessimist" so his dry wit and sense of humor really made this pleasurable to see. Natural acting. It felt intimate, and special.I disliked: For some moments it seemed to drag on a little too long. 83/100 A beautiful and moving documentary about the life of a writer and the woman he loved. I think anyone could enjoy this. It's just a simple, well told and profound story.Read more reviews at: www.theordinaryreview.blogspot.com

valadas A true love story indeed and a real one. The Portuguese novelist José Saramago (1998 Nobel Prize winner) knew in the second half of his life, by chance, the Spanish journalist Pilar Del Rio, more than 20 years younger than him and they fell in love with each other almost at once. They lived together till his death in 2010. From a certain moment on they went to live in Lanzarote (Canary Islands) since he found much more support from the Spanish authorities than from the Portuguese ones at the time. They eventually married each other. This movie shows the last years of their lives in a documentary form with great quality. The images speak for themselves without the need of great explanations and the dialogues between the couple and with other people are so natural, spontaneous and true and supported by a very intelligent shooting and cut that we can feel how that relationship between novelist and wife is illuminated by a true love, a love that doesn't have great visual expression in manners and attitudes but whose depth we can feel in the constant cooperation and assistance Pilar gives to José not only personal but also and very important, in his writing activities, being simultaneously a careful and loving wife and an efficient secretary and public relations. Thus she contributed very much to his literary success and we can also feel his gratitude for that. This documentary real love story will touch you more than many fiction movies of the same kind.

Silvia Lopes This is a story about love and about truth. The honesty starts behind the camera - Miguel Gonçalves Mendes captured that truth as if he wasn't there. And therefore, he was, inside and aside. That is exactly what gives us this enormous feeling of getting to know the intimate being of one of the greatest writers of all times: Saramago and his Pilar. There's something curious about the movie title "José and Pilar" - "pilar" (as "pillar") in Portuguese means "firm, upright, insulated support for a superstructure". Pilar was indeed the pillar for Saramago. And so was he to her the other way around, as in great love stories must be.

RResende It's so hard to make an engaging documentary. The usual process is to make the facts of stories you're supposed to be told into a coherent narrative line, even if in reality that line isn't so clear. That will provide the audiences with a story, something to follow. But how you follow that story is usually in a more external way than how you watch fiction, because in documentary you can't or won't have the same devices to fold you into the thing. You have always that trick on reenact some stuff, if the theme is history. That's lame to me, and lazy.Now here you have something really interesting. The film shows us countless excerpts of the lives of the 2 protagonists throughout the course of about 2 years. The film is presented as a reportage, more than a documentary, meaning that images are what you make of it, words come up apparently loosely. No bent narrative is delivered to you. Or so it seems.Underneath this apparently random display of images, there's a subtle layered structure. The life of the couple José/Pilar in the period of the film mapped to the story of the elephant in the book Saramago is writing. The story that this film displays mapped into the larger story of Saramago's life, with all its weight in the story of literature and Portuguese culture, as we get it in between the lines in several moments of the narrative. The whole idea of journey and encounter mapped into the love story of José and Pilar.And ultimately, as the title denounces, that story is central here. The idea of a pair of people bound by the art of one of them, who chooses to share it, allow the other half to be a part of it. Live as one, that's the beautiful part of the story. I'm glad they chose to share a bit of that story with as, by allowing us to get into it. His art matters. He is a humanist, has profound ideas, truly powerful ideas, and changed language, invented a new way on which people can express.There is one moment when the metaphor for journey mapped into people's lives is perfect: in Saramago's hometown, one street has his name, another street which crosses the other one has her name. Crossed paths.My opinion: 4/5http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com