Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 10/16/20

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Friday, October 16, 2020

Pixote (Hector Babenco, 1981)

Jorge Julião and Fernando Ramos da Silva in Pixote

Cast: Fernando Ramos da Silva, Jorge Julião, Marilia Pêra, Gilberto Moura, Edilson Lino, Zenildo Oliveira Santos, Claudio Bernardo, Israel Feres David, Jose Nilson Martin Dos Santos, Elke Maravilha, Tony Tornado, Jardel Filho, Rubens de Falco. Screenplay: Hector Babenco, Jorge Durán, based on a novel by José Louzeiro. Cinematography: Rodolfo Sánchez. Art direction: Clovis Bueno. Film editing: Luiz Elias. Music: John Neschling.

At the risk of sounding flippant, I have to call Hector Babenco's Pixote an almost perfect feel-bad movie. Not only is what appears on screen unrelentingly harrowing and sordid, but the fate of the young non-professional actor who plays the title character -- he was shot dead by police at the age of 19 -- carries its own burden of sorrow. Yet as a work of art Pixote has a kind of tragic nobility, an unflinching look at the life of the wretched of the Earth, accomplished with the kind of realism that only film can provide. I can't help feeling that Dostoevsky and Zola would have envied Babenco the availability of the camera to show the world what they could only display in words. Pixote (Fernando Ramos da Silva) is a street kid, rounded up and sent to a brutal reformatory, from which he escapes with a group of friends, who hustle their way into the underworld of Brazil's cities, involving themselves in everything from purse-snatching to drug-running to prostitution to murder. It works because of a stunning ensemble of performances with a few standouts, especially Jorge Julão as the transgender Lilica and Marilia Pêra as the ailing prostitute Sueli. If Pixote has a major failing, it's that its tragic vision results in no catharsis, only a numb feeling of hopelessness as Pixote and his kind face an unaccommodating society. But it's also a work of well-shaped art, of subtly shifting tones, that needs to be judged chiefly for its clarity and honesty.