Bye Bye Brasil

At last, a film I can unreservedly recommend--well, at least to adults.

"Bye Bye Brazil" is a film with heart, involving three-dimensional characters I was able to care about, their stories told unpretentiously in a straightforward exposition unhindered by self-conscious special effects, confusing games with the time-frame, etc. as in so many "artistic" films I've been watching lately (and in some cases ejecting from the player before they're finished).

Too bad this film is from 1979. I wish it were brand new, so I could hope for a return to these plain and honest values in film-making.

As soon as I saw that the title song was sung by Chico Buarque, one of my very favorite musicians, I suspected I was in for a pleasant evening, and I wasn't disappointed. The movie would be worth buying (apparently available on VHS only) just for that wonderful song, sung in its lengthy entirety over the closing credits, and briefly at the film's commencement. But "Bye Bye Brazil" offers much more than a pretty (and very funny) song. Time and again I was reminded of Bergman's films, as the interplay between the five chief characters developed. There's a certain visual resemblance to some of Bergman's scenes, too.

You could have a worse model.

Highly recommended--though not for kids.

It shows a Brazil from the inside, a very touching film that we see the life choices of small mambembes style artists that circulate in their own network and alternative of presentations. A movie with our way and our little tricks, wonderful!

The filmmaker is the brilliant maceioense Cacá Diegues, made, among others, Xica da Silva in 1976, on slavery in Brazil. The protagonists are the experienced Jose Wilker (The Black Cover Man of 1980) and Beth Faria (For All: The Trampoline of Victory of 1997). There is also the young actor and cantr Fabio Junior.

It is a precious gem. The story of the Caravana Rolidei, a group of poor traveling circus performers, is as fresh today as the first time I saw it. The caravan travels in the Brazilian countryside in a time where television is taking over and making all other sorts of entertainment obsolete. Very touching, very Brazilian, very easy to find in your video store.

By far Bye Bye Brazil is an essential Brazilian picture, perhaps among the top-ten of modern era at least, it owes too much for an awesome premise allied a well-drafted screenplay grounded in an illiterate language of the priceless main character Lorde Cigano (José Wilker) an epitome of the Brazilian trickster, together with a tawdry-hot lady Salomé (Betty Faria) and their faithful black sidekick Andorinha (Principe Nabor) traveling into smallest cities in the largest northeast of the Brazil, when they randomly meet a silly accordion player Ciço (Fabio Jr.) and his pregnant wife Dasdô (Zaira Zambelli).

They usually jumping into another town, unfortunately the time in changing with the advent of TV, also the harder drought in that surroundings did not allowed sell any ticket for money, instead they had to received some goods from the scarce audience, thus Lorde Cigano hears some news about a new road labeled Trans Amazon recently built linking into far off Altamira city a sort of the gate of the Amazon properly where according the source lays out the future of the country, beyond the far frontier where the money is, in this longest journey they stumble with the real natives, reaching in a crowed and cluttered city they didn't find any fortune whatsoever, although the turning point of their lives, then after more downs rather ups they split at last.

This fantastic picture conceived by the avant-garde director Cacá Diegues, exposes the real Brazil in turning of the seventies a changing period of time, a self-portrait of Brazilian people as a whole, it was produced by the old Brazilian clan of filmmakers Luis Carlos Barreto Productions with vast expertise in own cinema as DONA FLOR E SEUS DOIS MARIDOS, INOCÊNCIA, VIDAS SECAS, O HOMEM QUE DESAFIOU O DIABO just to name a few, a notoriously a true Brazilian triumph.

Thanks for reading.

Resume:

First watch: 1995 / How many: 3 / Source: TV-DVD / Rating: 8.5.

I first saw this film around 1985, when it was still new, and before I started studying and visiting Brazil seriously. I did not remember much at all, probably because I did not understand the significance of what I was seeing. Now, after four visits to Brazil (mostly Amazon and Northeast), it makes a lot more sense, and I will be recommending it to students.

The movie was made near the end of the (1964-85) military period, when political discourse was possible but still needed to be done cautiously. So the film addresses serious concerns about the government's programs to encourage migration, but it does so with humor and finesse.

It is a brilliant film, and gives some insight to the ongoing suffering of the sertao, the cultural context of forro, the folly of development in Brasilia, and the drivers of deforestation in the Amazon.