danielpoeira

This movie is just as boring as any Kurosawa movie--and just as beautiful as one. If you're looking for action, go see Apocalypse Now or Dracula. But if you want to understand formalism, color work, creative narrative structure and the way Kurosawa influenced american cinema, try this. And forget about the story. Special note for the soundtrack by Tom Waits.

Brazil is more than Rio and the rainforest. Sometimes I wish it wasn't, like when I watch this movie. In the early 60s, farm workers in Pernambuco organized themselves against labor exploitaition. Some people tried to make a movie about it. But when the military dictatorship came, they have all been arrested. The movie was banned, people arrested, equipment taken, and the leader of the workers was murdered. In 1985, the original movie crew went back to the place and found the people, interviewing them to find out what happened through all these horror years.

This is a very rare movie, but the story is very spread among brazilian cinema people. When brazilian art master Di Cavalcanti died, Glauber Rocha went to his funeral... with a camera. The short movie shows Cavalcanti`s corpse in the coffin, the funeral, and his family yelling at Rocha to get out of there with that camera, while in the background we hear Jorge Ben singing "Umbabarauma, homem gol", a famous samba-funk song about a famous brazilian soccer player. The guts make the myth.