Deus é Brasileiro

This movie is important because it's helping the rebirth o Brazilian cinema. It's not a masterpiece, but it's driving interesting crowds to the theaters. The story follows pretty much the style of "Auto da Compadecida", but it hasn't the same brilliance. Antonio Fagundes does a boring portrayal of God, coming to "spend vacations" in poor northeastern Brazil. The screenplay is sometimes confusing and the storyline is all broken up. Paloma Duarte deserves credit for doing well her part as "Madá", but Wagner Moura is irritating as "Taoca". If you have nothing better to do on a rainy weekend, see it. It's amusing and lighthearted, but it's not going to be the "movie of your life".

I have just seen the movie God is Brazilian and absolutely loved it. I found the dialogs hilarious and intelligent. This God is certainly a gust of fresh air compared to his American counterpart. God is a good guy, simple, vain and proud of his work. He just wants to take a vacation because mankind gives him so much to do. The other two main characters, Taoca and Madá (short for Madalena) are just so human that they could stand for the whole of mankind, as can all the other characters that appear in the movie. The story is a bit those medieval moralities where the characters start a journey that will reveal the truth. In their way they meet all sorts of characters that will help them on their quest. The best thing, however, are the dialogs. Just hilarious!

Carlos Diegues, the Brazilian director, takes us on a trip of enlightenment, when he invites us to come along in this road movie, in which God, taking the form of a man of a certain age, appears to a young man who doesn't believe in anything. Taoca, the young man, decides to accompany the God figure in a trip which will make him watch, first hand, what this larger than life figure has in store for him.

Mr. Diegues is a director that always surprises. In this film, he is playing with our credibility as Taoca and God travel through the back roads of that vast country that is Brazil. In the process, Taoca goes from being skeptic, to a complete understanding about what this God is all about and what he is capable of doing. Mr. Diegues' films have a great look because of the director's sense of color that must be evident in the places where his movies are set.

The film is made more enjoyable because of the interplay of Antonio Fagundes, who plays God, and Wagner Moura, an actor who shows great promise. Mr. Fagundes is perfect as the God reincarnated. Wagner Moura, who we had admired in "Caminho das Nuvems", brings the right blend of skepticism and humor to the situation he is thrown into. We also see Paloma Duarte, who plays Mada, a young woman with a sad past, who goes along with two strangers, leaving her dreary life behind.

"Deus E Brasileiro" will delight Mr. Diegues' fans.

Honestly, Brazilian cinema is not inside my radar. With respect I say I saw the beautiful "City of God" in its original language and I was fascinated. But when you see these actors, a plot like this one and images that want you to stay with them, you can't reject a film.

Carlos Diegues must have been the most influential of all. He, alongside many screenwriters developed a premise I have never heard before. I mean: God is Brazilian? I don't think so. But the fact that he could be and could visit the country as an ordinary man because he just wants to take a break and needs a "saint" to cover his position is creatively remarkable.

They must have had fun writing this stuff; playing and acting the characters as they were creating them. They created lovable characters. Who doesn't want to meet a guy like Taoca (Wagner Moura), so honest and lost in life, with nothing to loose or to win? The scene where he meets God (Antonio Fagundes) requires perfect comedic timing. Every element must be collaborating to achieve that, as He is standing on a stick and then Taoca looks at him from his canoe as if he was crazy, but He tries to explain, metaphorically, that He created the world. Taoca doesn't believe him and fish start jumping out of water and hit him. The effects, the cinematography, the acting, the writing; it all works together in that scene.

When Taoca is convinced about God, they both travel throughout Brazil, looking for this "saint", Quinca Das Mulas (Bruce Gomlevsky). During the journey, there's a lot said about love, animals, the Earth and the other planets, and the couple meets people, including Madá (Paloma Duarte), a young girl who suffered her mother's death, and Baudelé (Stepan Nercessian), a man Taoca owes money too.

The strong point about the film is that they took their issues seriously, in able to make them funny and real. They combined the story and elements perfectly. With God on screen all the time, they made us believe music played only when He wanted and objects moved only if he decided that to happen. One fantastic scene where the travelers have to make money and God turns into a magician. Soon, Madá is flying above people, and it is beautiful; how it can be comedy, fantasy, love and character development at the same time.

When Taoca and God are walking through the street, a cow passes by, and God looks at the animal strangely. "That's a cow", Taoca says. "Yes, I know…I invented it", God responds. "Yes, but we named it". It's funny! How the main males keep the excuse that God is a literature professor named Emanuel Salvador, when they are both always near to revealing who the old man actually is.

Performances are adequate and enormously pleasant for a type of movie like this one. Wagner Moura is definitely gifted, even when he shouts and exaggerates. It works. Antonio Fagundes does it effortlessly. He is relaxed as God itself, as his character says, traveling through galaxies. Paloma Duarte is beautiful, besides being also very talented and memorable.

"I can't perform a miracle at any moment", God tells Taoca. "It takes time". "God is Brazilian" is no miracle but perhaps with some more time

A visit of God to Earth is used as pretext to take the viewer into a journey across northeastern and northern Brazil. Although the action is placed in Brazil, it could well be a journey across the world, the world outside the great cities of the northern hemisphere.

The film has the quality of being simultaneously profound and a pleasure to watch. It is very modern (or post-modern) in this attempt to target a wide audience but still taking that audience into feelings and thoughts quite outside the thoughts of everyday life; into the things people tend to forget or overlook. Like the films of Kusturica, it is the opposite of the prototypical "intellectual" film: it is not boring, this film appeals to everyone. It also doesn't attempt to conclude with a satisfying, but reducing, statement.

I disagree with the comment of Ernesto Lopes. Fagundes' portrait of God is not at all boring, it's more a portrait of a bored, and imperfect, distracted and Brazilian God. I would also consider very good the "irritating" performance of Wagner Moura and the performance of Paloma Duarte a bit more fragile; but, most of all, I think that the story is not broken up at all -- the cut doesn't focus the details of the pretext story, it does not invite the viewer to pay attention to details, instead, it merely takes the viewer into a simple sequence of scenarios.

I think this film is much more than just amusing. It is often that films intended for wide audiences start off with a very interesting proposal and, in the course of development, loose their sense completely by attempting to fit the standards of normality (take "Meet Joe Black", for instance). This film never looses its sense, the intelligent proposal of the beginning is never betrayed.

Taking into account the relevance of the argument, taking into account that even renowned directors like Polanski often have stories of little relevance, and taking into account that 10 is reserved for Bergman and Fellini; I would rate this film with a 9 if I were allowed.