iradao

In Memoriam, directed by the very promising young director Gustavo Dourado and Thiago Campelo is a poetic movie, maybe a little difficult to follow but with much beauty in its poetry.

As the title says, the movie is about death, memory and nostalgia. It starts with the death of a filmmaker called Lucas Benevides, who won the first Oscar award to Brazil. Some characters act with sorrow when they hear that news, in the radio station. Along the movie other character dies and more people feel pity and think about the inexorable truth that everyone has to die.

But life is cyclical and every day a lot of people die, however a bunch of childen are born. This idea traverses the whole movie.

Actors are stupendous, the cinematography is spetacular and all technical details are perfect, something rare in brazilian short movies.

The movie title is not very good, since it is not about marijuana or legalization. It is about two rap artists who meet: Marcelo D2 (Renato Goes) and Luiz Skunk (Ícaro Silva) and how they manage to begin a rap/raggamuffin band called Planet Hemp, which was pretty inovative, at least in Brazil 1990's.

The photography shows a gray Rio de Janeiro without postcards, except by the arcs of Lapa, that helps to depicte a city with a lot of prejudice against black and poor people where there is police violence and truculence.

Besides than telling how a band was formed, the film is about how the character Skunk inoculates some thoughts and values inside Marcelo D2, that until now has sound solo career. Those values and thougths were already inside Marcelo but they only came out after his meetings with Skunk. Of course they are often smoking marijuana, what is forbidden in Brazil until now.

Very nice acting by Ícaro Silva and Stephan Nercessian, who plays Marcelo's father.

I missed anything about the other band members such as Gustavo Black Alien and B. Negão.

I won't analyze further because I don't want to create spoilers since it is the first review here.

The movie is filmed in the countryside of Brazil and also in the capital, Brasília. The story is about a 12 year old boy, Nando, who is played by an first-timer Davi Galeano, that couldn't make a good acting. In other hand, the girl who acts as his colleague, Iara, Maju Souza, is also a first-timer but does an excellent job.

There are some things that I didn't like in the movie. The first is the presence of a narrator, who sometimes tells us something we could understand only by watching the movie. The need for explaining things is, maybe, a trace from the Brazilian television dramarturgy.

The other problem is the soldier, that in the year of the plot, were semi-illiterates, many of them could barely read. But in the movie the soldier knows about communism and socialism. It is very unlikely.

The good points are the images filmed in the early years of Brasilia (my city) who are well placed throughout the movie. It is also a very nice production for the budget and the other actors are very well.

In summary, it is a beautiful story but the script still had some problems that difficult one's immersion in the plot.