Cine
Saw two cool Brazilian films yesterday in the cultural center La Cucha (The Doghouse), where they screen free movies every Sunday night.
The first was Carandiru, a 2003 release based on the true story of a doctor working in the Brazilian State Penitentiary called Carandiru. It details the brutal conditions of the horribly overcrowded prison (7500 inmates in a facility built for 4000), as well showing how people adapt to these conditions, what sort of distorted social structures develop to help people get by. The movie ends with . . . no, I won't tell you, you gotta watch it. Maybe I'll drop the spoiler in in a later post or the comments or something (with a warning, don't worry).
It's difficult not to make comparisons to Cidade de Deus (City of God), the last Brazilian film to make a big international splash, even though they're very different films, as an IMDB reviewer points out. I agree with the review that the part of Carandiru which is most similar to City of God, the individual flashbacks where the prisoners relate the stories of how they ended up inside, is the most contrived and least entertaining. The more important comparison I would make to City of God is that Carandiru's portrayal of life inside the prison is in so many ways similar to the portrayal of life in the favela in City of God. Jails and ghettos just aren't that different.
The second film was Deus E o Diabo na Terra do Sol ("God and the Devil in the Land of the Sun" also called "Black God, White Devil" in some English versions). This is a 1964 epic that was interesting and weird. What really stood out for me were the incredible durations of absolute silence - minutes and minutes without a word, without any soundtrack, nothing. In some ways it reminded me of good classic Westerns where volumes are communicated in each gesture, each facial expression, while very little is said explicity. The similarity is enhanced by the film's subject matter: a kind of morality play of cowherds, gunmen, ranchers, and religious figures (the only part that doesn't really fit into the Western scheme) in the arid wild-west environment of the Brazilian sertão. The movie runs long, and is very slow in parts, at least by modern standards, but worth having a look.
As an aside, I like watching movies in Portuguese with Spanish subtitles because the languages are similar enough that I can pick up a lot of the Portuguese, or at least get the feeling that I can.
The first was Carandiru, a 2003 release based on the true story of a doctor working in the Brazilian State Penitentiary called Carandiru. It details the brutal conditions of the horribly overcrowded prison (7500 inmates in a facility built for 4000), as well showing how people adapt to these conditions, what sort of distorted social structures develop to help people get by. The movie ends with . . . no, I won't tell you, you gotta watch it. Maybe I'll drop the spoiler in in a later post or the comments or something (with a warning, don't worry).
It's difficult not to make comparisons to Cidade de Deus (City of God), the last Brazilian film to make a big international splash, even though they're very different films, as an IMDB reviewer points out. I agree with the review that the part of Carandiru which is most similar to City of God, the individual flashbacks where the prisoners relate the stories of how they ended up inside, is the most contrived and least entertaining. The more important comparison I would make to City of God is that Carandiru's portrayal of life inside the prison is in so many ways similar to the portrayal of life in the favela in City of God. Jails and ghettos just aren't that different.
The second film was Deus E o Diabo na Terra do Sol ("God and the Devil in the Land of the Sun" also called "Black God, White Devil" in some English versions). This is a 1964 epic that was interesting and weird. What really stood out for me were the incredible durations of absolute silence - minutes and minutes without a word, without any soundtrack, nothing. In some ways it reminded me of good classic Westerns where volumes are communicated in each gesture, each facial expression, while very little is said explicity. The similarity is enhanced by the film's subject matter: a kind of morality play of cowherds, gunmen, ranchers, and religious figures (the only part that doesn't really fit into the Western scheme) in the arid wild-west environment of the Brazilian sertão. The movie runs long, and is very slow in parts, at least by modern standards, but worth having a look.
As an aside, I like watching movies in Portuguese with Spanish subtitles because the languages are similar enough that I can pick up a lot of the Portuguese, or at least get the feeling that I can.