Pixote - Asphalt-Haie

Perhaps the most brutal filmic portrait of youth ever made; Charles Dickens meets Hieronymous Bosch in this tale of a group of boys struggling to survive in the reformatories and mean streets of Brazil as the cycle of prey transformed into predators is documented.

The saddest detail is to realize that this film, made almost twenty five years ago, documents a world that in terms of its poverty and depravity, has apparently changed very little. A brutal reality captured here but with some of the most layered acting I've ever seen in the history of film by a group of amateurs picked from the streets of Sao Paulo with no previous experience. Not one or two good performances, the entire cast is quite simply remarkable, and even sadder is the fact that most of them have probably now been swallowed by the street life they portrayed.

Not as sophisticated a vision as Bunuel's 'Los Olvidados' or as sensational as Clarke's 'Kids,' but in this genre of 'children growing up in the streets' it is easily the most emotionally powerful film of them all.

This film takes a hard, lingering look at the brutal horrors visited on and enacted by a group of poor kid criminals in Brazil. This is one of the most deeply disturbing movie experiences I've ever had. And yet, it almost felt necessary to continue to watch, to at the very least acknowledge the sorts of situations depicted here as real events that happen to real people. Masterfully made.

This is no walk in the park. I saw this when it came out, and haven't had the guts to watch it again. You will never see a more horrifyingly devastating or depressing movie. I felt like I'd been severely beaten. What kind of world are we living in when we have children who are treated worse than garbage? This is our world, what we have created, what we have allowed to happen. And I would hesitate to say that I-ME-WE are not responsible for this. Babenco made this film to wake us up, to shake us to our very core, and he succeeded. How can we be cruel, or self-indulgent, or neglectful of our children, when we see the graphic results of such behavior? He is pointing a finger of accusation at us all for doing this to the lowliest and least powerful of our society. And if you aren't doing something each day to prevent it, then you are part of the problem. I am NOT a religious fanatic, but this movie made me think about the state of my soul.

"Pixote: A Lei do Mais Fraco" deals with what is perhaps the greatest of all Brazilian themes: poverty. And along with poverty the other unnatural feelings and actions it brings; prostitution, violence, crime, rape and murder.

Brazil is the country of paradoxes, and its social problems are present everywhere. The difference between the rich and the poor; the beautiful and the ugly; happiness and the most profound human decay.

"Pixote" is one of the films that dare to touch and open these so painful wounds, and does it without the slightest glimmer of hope, in an honest portrayal of a country that, like Pixote himself, is already lost.

This is a difficult movie to watch, and would have been even more difficult had I known then that the actor playing the protagonist was in fact killed in his home by police at age 19. Pixote (PeeWee) is a street kid in Sao Paulo who is caught in a roundup triggered by a murder in which he had no involvement. He is committed to a juvenile prison where he witnesses brutality and exploitation that ordinary citizens try very hard to believe doesn't exist. When finally he escapes, he and three comrades survive by the only means they know, which is crime. What makes the film so heart-rending is that both Pixote and the actor portraying him clearly do not wish to be the characters life circumstances have made them. Pixote tries to trust and to love and to bond, but there simply is no room in his world for the gentle side of human nature. One is left at the end wanting desperately to do something for the Pixotes of the world, but what? Building more children's's prisons with higher walls surely is not the answer...