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"República da desgraça," hinterland apocalypse. The primordial topography hungers for miracles, thus the cowhand's (Geraldo Del Rey) slash of resistance, a machete replying to the cheating master's whip. On the road with the wife (Yoná Magalhães), "nothing to take with us but our destiny." A bountiful country beyond the holy mountain or so preaches the fulminating prophet (Lidio Silva), the blood of innocents is his purifier of choice. His opposite number is "the two-headed cangaceiro" (Othon Bastos), Saint George in his own mind just as the holy man fancies himself Saint Sebastian redivivus. Dead ends, both, the leveler is the bounty hunter (Maurício do Valle) sipping coffee between priest and politician. A Blakean inversion, "the backlands shall become the sea and the sea shall become the backlands," nothing less for Glauber Rocha's lysergic cactus opera. From barren farm to cacophonous mysticism is a lateral move, one kind of stone replaces another over the crawling wretch's head in a sustained piece of comic excruciation just ahead of Buñuel's Simon of the Desert. (Rocha remembers the Potemkin gag of the crucifix wielded like a club, and there are flickering massacres à la the Odessa Steps.) "The law of government, and the law of the bullet." Villa-Lobos throbs, Canudos ruins, Lampião phantoms. Outlaw revolution turns out to be its own impasse, rapacious depredations alternate with endless walks in sandy circles. A parallel with Pereira dos Santos' Vidas Secas, a military dictatorship on the horizon, all grist for the mill of the sightless minstrel churning out folkloric ballads on the soundtrack. "Here's my rifle to save the poor from starving." The camera's concluding dash to the beach offers a fine mocking memory of The 400 Blows, and nearly half a century later Anderson takes up another dialectic in The Master. With Sonia Dos Humildes, Antonio Pinto, João Gama, and Marrom. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |