Antonio das Mortes

this is one of the most beautiful films that i have come across. The beautifully changing styles of narration to get to a complete absurd or a rather dream like experience at the end of the film makes it one of the most beautiful essay on form. a must watch for anyone who is interested in understanding how a narrative style can change in the process of a film.

glauber rocha is like a magician who brings out the pigeon from nowhere and turns into a rabbit and makes it into a formation of a cloud. it is pure poetry.

The characters for Rocha are pure ideas, the movements and kinesics , takes them out of the fences of realism to the level of an oral narrative or a mythical one for that matter. As the movie progresses it turns, it can be best said, to take up the form of a folk dance.

it is a normal phenomena to notice the drop outs in the first quarter of the film,before the turn over starts. the wrong perception created by the experiences of the various films that had ruled our viewings.

at the end i will like to say it is a sure treat for anyone interested in the grammar and language of cinema.

Antonio das Mortes is a great example to understand Brazilian 'Cinema Novo', but also, to understand the complexity of social relations in the country, specifically in the northeastern region -- Brazil's poorest desertic region. Three groups of people are presented to the viewer. The 'Coronel' is the one who owns the land and controls the local authorities. The medium classes are represented by the 'Doctor', the 'Teacher' and the Catholic church -- all of them responsible for mantaining the structures of power that allow unequality to perpetuate. Lastly, the miserable people, who are led by the 'Cangaceiro' and the 'Santa' and are represented mostly by women of color, who lean on faith and popular culture to unite against poverty and starvation. The language, as in most of 'Cinema Novo' films, is overly artistic, caricatured and very little realistic at times. Theatrical acting and visual poetry are resources to tell the narrative of the film, and they do well, but sometimes the scenes are very disconnected from human logicality -- at times, the characters are simply unreasonable. Nonetheless, that is exactly how it is supposed to be. This movie is art by art, with a social narrative that fits perfectly in the times where unequality grew the most in Brazilian history. At the end of the day, the killers and the martyrs were all the same -- people.

I was amazed to see that others have given this movie an average rating of 8.5 out of 10. It's extremely dated, confusing, and quite silly. Some people walked out of it when it showed at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, Calif., USA, recently. And that audience represents the acme of film buffs and connoisseurs --people who can tolerate almost anything.

Went into this one not really knowing what to expect. I'm no student of Brazilian history, and am sure this meant many allusions and much else that was interesting about the film passed me by. There were stretches where I felt my eyelids drooping (this was after a couple of beers, admittedly). However, some of the imagery is breathtaking, and the final ten minutes are just astonishing. I would watch it again for the end alone. Music too is great, particularly the final snatch of song/narration. Audience (half Brazilian, half staid English types like myself) was fairly bopping in the aisles...

Glaubler Rocha were one greatest brazilian director for all times, your movies had often political criticism against the system, from this point he was really banished by military regime which censured all his movies, so he decided went to France, this picture show it clearly when he displayed in some characters your political vision, starting with a dare idea to use one the most important catholic saint in Brazil "Saint George" Glauber used a metaphor were the Saint symbolize a poor people and the Dragon means a rule of the colonels that took place in nort-easten for many centuries, the battle between the good and the evil, restored from several sources this picture comes alive to us in good shape best as possible, with a lot of bonus which gave us another point of view of this remarkable director who died so young, but as a visionary filmaker deserves to be discovered by brazilians fans!!

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First watch: 2019 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8.5