Posted by
Andrews on Tuesday, April 08, 2008 7:26:54 PM
I just noticed one of the advertisements running alongside my blog, and I have to take exception. Here is the blurb:
"'Manda Bala' isn't a film about Brazil, it's about the United States in five years… This is one of the best and most powerful films I have seen in years."
- Errol Morris
As this film is apparently about the rampant kidnapping and political corruption in Brazil, I find it a bit of a dubious assertion that it depicts "the US in five years".
I don't care how much of a loony you are, whether on the far left, "Guantanamo is Dachau" fringe, or on the far right "McCain is forming the NAU in January" fringe, there is just no way the US will resemble Brazil in five years. Five years ago Brazil was still a basket case. It has been a political basket case for decades. True it is getting much worse, but it was never exactly a stable state. Since the end of the Empire of Brazil, the nation has been a rather typical South American post-colonial state, bouncing back and forth between militarist / nationalist corruption and socialist corruption. Brazil may have been a bit better than some, but it was never precisely what one would call a model nation.
The idea that the US will come to resemble a nation which has suffered a century or more of political corruption is just absurd.
POSTSCRIPT
Having said all that, I also must add that, from the reviews I have read, I really have no intention of seeing the film (Manda Bala). Not only does it sound like something in which I have no interest, but a number of reviewers seem to describe it as a bit pretentious and over-done. Then again, even the best filmed documentary on corruption and crime in Latin America is a hard sell to me,
but the descriptions I have read, even from those who liked it, have sealed the deal. I really have little patience for "powerful artistic visions", as that usually means ham-handed over-directed garbage.
And before some film fanatic tries to paint me as some sort of philistine, I would say that I am quite conversant with film, I have enjoyed a number of very peculiar directors (Jodorowski, Tarkovsky, and others), but I find that a lot of directors being praised today are perfect exemplars of style over substance. I just have little patience for what passes for "daring" these days. What passes for innovative are rehashes of 1960's and 1970's mondo and shock cinema, movies styled after bad music videos, or films filled with annoyingly shaky hand-held camera work. We seem to have very little originality lately, and the critics seem to respond only to brutality, or to confusion for the sake of confusion. I really have no fondness for either.