THEMOVIES

Brazil 1977: the viewer follows Marcello (Wagner Moura), through the metropolis of Recife, where the air is thick with fear and crime. A heartbreaking portrait of a country in which everyone is afraid of appearing on the radar of the military dictatorship. A painful chapter in the nation’s history. The opening images, in widescreen, evoke something akin to “Once Upon a Time” Sergio Leone’s style. These images set the tone for the rest of the film, with plot twists, incidental tragedy, and absurd situations. Call it: magical-tropical-realism. Marcello, a widower, is not a political activist but feels compelled to leave Brazil with his son. That, however, proves difficult. Because of incriminating and commercially sensitive discoveries he has made as a professor of technology, a corrupt minister sends hitmen after him. In a side storyline, the viewer also experiences the mass hysteria that gripped the population at the time sparked by the film Jaws. The unrest is further fueled when a shark is caught with a leg in its stomach… The film shifts seamlessly, with black humor, toward political violence and mass hallucination. In terms of atmosphere and cinematography, a true masterpiece, framed as a political thriller. A must-see for lovers of cinema and history