Guerra do Brasil - Toda Verdade Sobre a Guerra do Paraguai

For Mr. Back, a bad as well as incorrigibly biased filmmaker , the Paraguay War was nothing but an internal fight of the Freemasonry. The Brazilian Emperor Pedro II, his Minister of the Army, the Marquis of Caxias, the Paraguayan dictator and invader Solano Lopez, all were Masons. The Paraguayan historian herein interviewed is excellent. The Brazilian historian herein interviewed is a merely crazy, idiotic Leftopath. The Argentine historian, nevertheless, is a reasonable one, although he may be mistaken in saying that Catholic religion and Freemasonry are always incompatible. The bottom line is, Solano Lopez was no Ho Chi Minh, perhaps a proton-Saddam Hussein. The Homeland Volunteers (Voluntarios da Patria)summoned via Imperial Decree were not black slaves shackled by chains made in Catamarca, Argentina (!!! ???) and sent by default to certain death. Every country has the natural right to defend itself against foreign aggression. That's what Brazil and the Triple Alliance did against Paraguay, period.

Despite its pretentious tagline ("All the Truth About the Paraguay War"), this documentary accomplishes to present several perspectives of the conflict by interviewing scholars, writers, military personnel and descendants of soldiers who fought that war. To connect those accounts and tell the history of the conflict, Sylvio Back presents images and illustrations of the battles and the political characters involved, as well as footage from movies produced in Argentine and Brazil. The soundtrack is too experimental and sometimes irritating. However, the result is an interesting and comprehensible picture of the war and the causes underlying it. I have to say, though, that even the DVD version has a poor image and sound quality (looks like it came directly from VHS).

Informative and balanced documentary on the greatest war in South America, mixing old-fashioned TV narration, good interviews, cinema footage, and drawings and paintings.