Extrapolating from the four films I’ve been able to see, Brazilian writer/director Kleber Mendonça Filho has been turning out well-made, enigmatic, politically-minded shorts, tv & features for two decades.* (Not much distribution Stateside.) Now, he's upped his game from solid to great. This film awarded everywhere but the Oscars®. (Four noms/zero wins: you can always count on Mr. O.) The film a portrait of Brazil in 1977 (there’s also a 2025 epilogue) less focused on military rule and atrocities than the wide, often banal effects (deadly in their own way) of a corrupt government: venal cops threatening to ’plant’ evidence on shakedown targets; eagerly cooperating bureaucrats in State offices; highly organized Southern gangs using Quotidian Horrors and Mob Murder to control the obsequious North of the country. Actor Wagner Moura (probably new to most viewers*) in protean form, is Marcelo/Ambrose, a man trying to leave the country, along with his young son after the mother’s death from cancer, finds he being blocked by past politics. Going North for possible escape, he travels under an assumed name and pays the expected bribes & fees to get his papers & passport in order, waiting it out in a house of similarly desperate people. Filho handles the large cast. sweeping action & events with the dexterity of a Disney artist with a multiplane camera, everything clear (character & narrative) with lines of action indirectly indicated rather than being pointed out. The elliptical style giving a timeless/universal quality to events. With the sort of thrillingly choreographed suspense and compound street chases Francis Coppola was a master of when he still regularly made movies. Filho’s film immensely satisfying on multiple levels.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: *Now 50, if looking about 35, Moura is suddenly a hot property with upcoming co-stars like Colin Farrell, Ralph Fiennes & Kristin Stewart. You may already know his voice as he was ‘Wolf’ in the superb PUSS IN BOOTS sequel, THE LAST WISH/’22. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/01/puss-in-boots-last-wish-2022.html
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Try Filho’s hauntingly enigmatic NEIGHBORING SOUNDS/’14, a film that blows up inside your head months after watching it. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/07/o-som-ao-reder-neighboring-sounds.html
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