Based on a 1934 novel by Graciliano Ramos (author also of Vidas Secas), and capturing the spare style and penetrating depth of the novel, São Bernardo tells of a man, Paulo, who rises through every venal means imaginable to become master of the same plantation where he was maltreated as a hired hand. He marries an educated woman with leftist leanings for the respectability she will bring him, and proceeds to drive her to an early grave: the master-slave relationship is all he knows. Set in the twenties (impressively recreated here), São Bernardo resonates in any era: some critics saw it as an exposé of the Brazilian economic miracle, like Paulo's "miracle," a cruel deception; others, as about the genesis of a fascist. But if not rooted in time, it is a tale very much rooted in place-in the land, and the "properties" of property.