Guerra de Canudos

The film tagline reads (in my English translation). "Brazil has been waiting for this film for a hundred years." Well, while the events depicted in the film did take place a little over 100 years before, the film-going public wasn't anxiously waiting for this tragic matter to be retold. Having said that, the film is a major player in the so-called "Renaissance of Brazilian cinema." It does deal with one of the most tragic events in the country's history, and tells the story exceedingly well. Featuring an outstanding cast, and directed by the respected Sergio Rezende, this movie when released was the best example to date that Brazil was indeed capable of producing a quality full-blown epic film with convincing drama, emotion, rhythm, and great cinematic beauty. Highly recommended for those who enjoy historical epics.

The Brazilian History is full of mentions about the Canudos War, but there was no movie about it until this one. And I should say it is really good. The fabulous cast, the battle scenes, everything take the audience to the reality. It is one of the first good moments of the Brazilian cinema renassaince of the 90's. Very interesting plot and production. Special congratulations for the screenplay, that made a so complex and detail fact very tight and connected.

Epic historic melodrama with both purely fictional and real based characters in the bloody war of Canudos, in Northeastern Brazilian hinterland. It is a long story which is interesting to see gender roles in that society, disreputable military ethos, the varied behaviour of the press during the conflict, the serious lack of welfare policies in that region which was not improved with the rise of the Republic, and obviously the controversial messianic character Antônio Conselheiro and his militias: he was reactionary, monarchist, religious fundamentalist and even booster of mystical fanaticism, but also brave, concerned about the poor and the abandoned, democratic in what concerns respecting the will of those who could chose to follow him or not, and a man who defended honestly what the believed. As the movie is quite long, it is not very regular. However, not only it has very good moments but also is able to explore many important events and subplots. To resume, I shall also mention excellent actors who played core characters: José Wilker, Cláudia Abreu, Paulo Betti, Marieta Severo, Tonico Pereira, Roberto Bontempo, Tuca Andrade and José de Abreu. Director Sérgio Rezende has an important contribution in his initiatives of bringing Brazilian History to the big screen.

Sérgio Rezende's Guerra de Canudos unfolds like a visual lament carved into the scorched soil of the Brazilian backlands. The film's cinematography is not merely beautiful-it is searing, devotional, and cruel in its fidelity to the land. The Sertão, that ancient and biblical stretch of sun-bleached earth, is rendered with a painter's eye and a witness's gaze - captures the arid vastness with such aching precision that the dust itself seems to carry ancestral memory.

Light and shadow do not simply fall across the frame; they haunt it. The harsh glare of the sun, the brittle textures of cracked soil, the withering foliage-each image breathes the same dryness that fills the lungs of its characters.

In its narrative structure, Guerra de Canudos remains impressively loyal to the historical chronicles of Euclides da Cunha, embracing not just the facts, but the fevered grandeur of the events that he so prophetically recorded. The film eschews romanticization in favor of a haunting coherence-an elegy to the tragedy that befell a community in the margins of a newborn Republic.

Yet, within this narrative nobility lies the film's one notable flaw: a tendency toward didacticism. At times, the dialogue veers into the overly instructive, betraying a desire not only to move but to teach, to explain rather than evoke. This inclination-toward a moralizing fable rather than a meditative reckoning-momentarily interrupts the immersion. But such moments, while perceptible, are mercifully rare and do not eclipse the film's deeper poetic truths.

The cast breathes life into history with a fierce solemnity, each performance deeply rooted in the soil of suffering and belief. There is no theatrical excess here-only the quiet intensity of people bound by faith, hunger, and defiance.

Cláudia Abreu, in particular, emerges as a luminous presence amid the dust. Her portrayal is not simply "notable"-it is haunting. Her eyes reflecting the shadow of doom. She is less a character than a vessel for the feminine dimension of resistance, a silent psalm amid the roar of war.

Guerra de Canudos is not merely a historical recounting; it is an inquiry into the eternal. Through the figure of Antônio Conselheiro and his followers, the film explores the intersection of mysticism and social decay. Time in Canudos is not linear-it is apocalyptic. The community resists the progressivist logic of the Republic not from ignorance, but from a profound refusal to sever spirit from land.

Here, desire is replaced by belief, and modernity arrives not as salvation but as siege. The Republic, child of Enlightenment, plays the part of the monster-unwilling to tolerate a mode of life that sings in an older key. The massacre is not simply political-it is metaphysical. It is the obliteration of an anachronistic dream.

Guerra de Canudos is, at its heart, a cinematic act of remembrance-stoic, painful, and necessary. It dares to gaze upon the bones buried beneath the foundations of a nation. Even when it falters into moral overstatement, its sincerity never wanes. It is a film that mourns aloud, without shame, the price of nationhood paid in blood and dust.

In a landscape where national cinema too often clings to caricature or despair, Rezende offers something rarer: historical dignity. This is a film not to be consumed, but contemplated-like the silence after battle, like the sun that refuses to set on scorched earth. It reminds us that tragedy is not only an event-it is a wound that continues to shape the soul of a people.

It is a film based on the conflict between the state of Brazil and a group of settlers (estimated in 6000) who had established their own community in the Northeastern state of Bahia, named Canudos. There were many attempts to suppress that rebellion by the military and they were unsuccessful; the result was a tragic end that saw a devastating killing of almost 6000 miserable people who abode that village, this being the deadliest massacre in Brazil to this day. Antônio Conselheiro was a mystic spiritual preacher of those days and he peregrinated those lands preaching a doctrine, building and reforming churches through many cities and valleys around. He was very unsatisfied with the so called New Republic installed in Brazil in Deodoro da Fonseca's government. Conselheiro used to wander through villages and cities in many states in the northeast of Brazil and in 1893 he decided to put down roots in a place called Canudos, interior of the state of Bahia. Because of his announcing promises of better future and opposing strongly against the state's New Republic thousands of new residents were attracted to that area and he soon gathered around 6000 people. The film Guerra de Canudos is a well made film that portrays Conselheiro from the beginning of his journeys to his fateful end by the military who were enraged by their strong endurance. Good performances by actors Paulo Betti as Zé Lucena, José Wilker as Antonio Conselheiro and an outstanding performance by Cláudia Abreu as Luiza.