elemcivs This film, as Variety has mentioned, definitely blurs the line between documentary and fiction -If one does not recognize the protagonists - it could just as well be a fictional film about Love - as it should be.The film is captivating, avoids sentimentality and becomes expansive in your mind days after viewing. Will probably have to see it various times to really capture the organic magic that Goncalves has created in Jose and Pilar.As a side note, it is curious to note that Saramago not only wrote the Elephant's Journey during this film but 2 more stories, Cain and The Notebook after the film ...It is a hopeful piece of film. Just beautiful.

Ruben Rodrigues José+Pilar Is a real scenes movie, about real love. An extreme felling, a felling of love for the spouse and everyone else, shown during the writing of a legacy without rest. "For the over 20 years", by José Saramago (Nobel-laureate novelist). A man born in the middle of nowhere, in a '20s Portugal who became a self- made man, a pure soul. I loved to see some epic ideals expressed in video (about life and death), as well as Saramago's repeated answers to the repeated questions made by the media. In Portugal, the movie ran on public television in prime-time, and that was an unusual fact. The scenes has a very interesting rhythm and music.

joaotatocosta I'm a José Saramago reader for about 15 years. This documentary it's just mind blowing. I saw it we my girlfriend and at the end I find myself thinking that the love between José and Pilar was a beautiful thing to see. In this documentary, you can really understand what about a relationship should really be. Fernando Meirelles did a great job showing everyone how brilliant and talented José Saramago was. I think everyone will be really touched with their love: "If I died at 63 before I meet Pilar, I would died a lot older then I am right now..." hi said. Really miss his books. "I think we are blind. Blind people who can see, but do not see" J.Saramago

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