No, or the Vain Glory of Command

1973, the final years of Portugal's colonial war in Africa. As a unit moves through a region in revolt, Cabrita, a soldier who has studied history, tells his comrades about the country's past. What he recounts are not the victories but the defeats: stories reaching back to Roman times, running through Alcácer Quibir, always arriving at the same place. Manoel de Oliveira's film questions both the imperial myth and the army carrying it. It neither defends colonialism nor dismisses it from outside; it undoes the history the country tells about itself using the mouths of its own soldiers. What is being said is plain: the glory of command is empty. The production won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1990. The scenes are long, the speech is literary and the pace is deliberately slow.