"The Muckers" ("Jakobine") is a German/Brazilian co-production directed by Jorge Bodanzky and Wolf Gauer that has many amazing production
values, detailed researched while retelling a real life story that is barely known by Brazilians - the case of a religious cult led by a woman
and her Germany community group that struggles in the south of Brazil to lead their life and children's education in a different manner than the ones dominated by the
Church and the state of Rio Grande do Sul, which led to the deadly "Revolt of the Muckers" causing hundreds of deahts in 1874. The film has some
unique qualities that doesn't look it was made in Brazil: it's spoken mostly in German, all subtitled, and the look of everything, the settings,
19th Century recreation with costumes and location that has a real European look to it that doesn't feel like our cinema. The closest of a similar
sentiment was the spectacular "O Quatrilho", also with a story set in the south of Brazil.
Yet, heart of the matter is that I couldn't like this one - but I tried hard. The main reason "The Muckers" was lost on me is that I don't like
when a movie demands to research the real life story, or situations that happened, before I see the film. I've seen plenty of real stories turned
into movies that I didn't know much about the facts that were amazing experiences, and made me research about the topics shown. With
this one I had to pause after a series of
bizarre events started to happen because it was too unbelievable or insane to be truth - when Jacobina Mentz Maurer, the leader, was taken from
her bed to jail because alleged she had a somewhat death paralysis and the authorities thought she was faking her death. That actually happened.
And the problem if you read any articles or wikipedia over the Revolt of the Muckers, by the time you watch the film you lose the excitment, the
surprises, and you're spoonfed in such a way that everything becomes pointless, even the political/sociological aspects of it all - those are
interesting to talk about, specially if audiences can draw paralels with current themes and current society.
It's also hard to figure out if the film is pro-Mucker (this is a nickname, not a surname) or against the cult. As we follow the group and
their traditions and rituals, which included premotions, miraculous potions from healers and all that alienated the rest of the south community; cases of
enchatment of men to bring more people to the religion; and their insistence of families not sending their children to schools or local churches.
They lived in poverty and using of field work, with the small lands they had and used of exchanging goods with local merchants rather than
using money (as usual in history, they're accused of being Communists).
There are moments that the film made them look a very sympathetic group,
one of those utophic projects that one dreams but knows it can't work for too long. Things change when a suspect suicide brings accusations on
them, arrests, and next thing you know they're pro-gun folks who want to defend themselves and religion gets on a second plan - like Waco,
or Branch Davidians in America, for instance. And this group managed to defeat the military forces from the region when things escalated, and there's
also the massacre of civilians opposed to the group - the most impressive sequence of the film.
It doesn't make Brazilian authorities look good either, as their plans go in recruiting the locals in shooting the Muckers, rather than trying
harder to use of police, army and legal authorities to analyze what was crime, sentencing to jail, or at least resource, to call for the national
guard, the Emperor's forces to damage control. Those roles are given to giants like Paulo César Pereio and José Lewgoy in small nice performances,
while the Muckers are mostly played by south locals, who are very convincing in their roles.
Another thing that affected me was a slight similarity with a small film called "La Cecilia" (1975), an Italian film about a group of a Communists who
go to Brazil of the late 1800's to form their own community, on the invite of emperor Dom Pedro II, and establish the society they couldn't do back in
Italy. It's almost the same story, but that one was better, amazingly fascinating and it made me dream of a wild experience that I liked seeing on the
screen - though knowing it would fail badly. In short, I didn't have to research things beforehand. To me, movies have to carry a fascination that the less
you read about it, the better the experience that a screenwriter and a director are trying to do - film adaptation of written material is a different
topic. But it's not that I hated the film, it just didn't appeal for too long. Might get a second view in some distant future. 5/10.
