Cidade de Deus

Cidade de Deus is a complex movie from 2002 that gives an in depth look at a favela that produced many hoodlums and many social problems for the people who lived in the favela. The movie gives insight into the tangled weave of gangs and violence and the monetary constraints of the people of this favela. It centers around a few main characters, Rocket, the narrator, Lil' Z, Benny, Carrot, and eventually Knockout Ned. These characters become inter weaved with each other through a complex social system that they themselves created.

It could be said that the reason these people, Lil' Z, Benny, and Carrot, were driven to drug dealing and being hoodlums in general, was the lack of money/jobs available in the favela. The Pino article says it best in the opening paragraph, "Favelados have served the city of Rio de Janeiro in every imaginable capacity, but when their services were no longer required they have been discarded like rotten fruit."The opportunity for jobs for people living in the favelados was small, depending on which one you lived in. Pino goes on to compare three different favelados all of which had different economic issues and job opportunities than the others. Pino goes on to discuss how laborers from the favelas were lucky to get a full-time permanent job. It was very rare for these workers to get a permanent job until he discusses the last favela which was lucky enough to have plants such as GE right beside itself and gave its people more job security than most people had. On pages 24-25 in the Pino article it says that "Nineteen hundred shanties reported an average income of Cr$245 per household." This lack of income can explain why these kids felt the need to steal and in the end become drug lords, these actions gave them the opportunity it have money that they could have never gotten their hands on before.

Oliveira goes on to compare the Brazil favelas with ghettos in New York City to help people comprehend what it was like to live in these areas. It is clear that the mentality of these areas were much different than the ghettos in America. The ghettos came about from whites leaving the urban and going to the outskirts of the city while favelas were formed by people who built their houses where they thought work would be. It was cheaper to build a house in a favela than rent an apartment in the city. They have very little political weight and Oliveira goes on to discuss the differences in these areas by comparing their political involvement. "In Brazil much of the progressive black political leadership that achieved political office arose from the community-based movement, while in the United States it arose from the civil rights movement." pg. 84. The favelas had to stick up for themselves in politics, no one else was looking out for them like the civil rights movement did in America and this fact could also play in the creation of hoodlums in the favelas. No one was watching their back and they make it clear in the movie that the cops did not come there.

These two articles give a bit of insight into why these kids become the drug lords that they did; however, there is always more factors than one can explain in a simple article. In the favela, one had to look out for themselves and the ones that they cared about and that mentality produced the scenes that happened in the movie.

The Beginnings of El Che, The Motorcycle Diaries

The Motorcycle Diaries is a film about two young men who journey through South America while on break from school and who discover a world far more complex than their social structure in Argentina had ever showed them. The movie begins very lighthearted and comical but slowly gets darker as the story progresses. The inconsistency between life of city dwellers and indigenous Indians is shown and is depicted as having a huge effect on the two boys. The leper colony is what is shown last and is presented to have the biggest effect on their perspective of this inequality. If one did not know anything about this movie or the people depicted in it before hand than it comes as a surprise at the end that one of the boys, Ernesto Guevara, goes on to become a Latin American hero and plays a role in the Cuban revolution and will become known throughout the world as El Che.

His life is one that us heavily speculated on and it seems as if everyone wants to give an opinion of what it is that shaped his world view, what it was that made him make the transfer from Ernesto Guevara to El Che. Elena speculates that Guevara’s upbringing as a middle class boy in Argentina played a role in his transformation. He had access to books and education that provided him the sight to see what was really going on in the world. His eyes were open to the differences between middle class, working class, and indigenous people. Also, his lack of opinion on the Peron government is a huge topic for Elena. HE is depicted as have respect for the equalization that the working class got under Peron but utter disgust with the tourism market that was opened up. He seemed to scoff at people that traveled  to resorts or the coasts, he was a believer in what seems to be traveling to learn and see the world. It is brought to light in this article though that his trip with Alberto was not his first out, he had previously traveled around Argentina and this fact could explain why he wanted to go out farther this time.

Drinot and Zulawski focus on Peru and Bolivia and their effect on the shaping of El Che’s worldview. Both talk about how little Che seemed to know about the indigenous people, it seems by the time it came to care, he cared much more for helping the people inside of knowing truly where they were coming from. Drinot points out that Guevara still played into many social stereotypes of the Indians, which is quite odd considering they were who he seemed the most interested in during his travels. He does not seem interested in politics though, very little writing exists, he focused much more on the people than the politics.

Overall, the movie is a pretty good depiction of what could have been a mile marker in Ernesto Guevara’s transformation in El Che and it seems that he will be written about by many people for years to come and the speculation about his life will never end.

Soy Cuba

Soy Cuba is yet another film made from the view of Russians about Cuba and the lead up to the Cuban revolution. Which seems to be quite an odd thing, wouldn’t one need to be apart of that nationality to really understand the full impact of a revolution? To get back on track, Soy Cuba depicts different peoples journeys before the revolution occurs and makes the audience really feel sympathy towards these people and how they are living. The movie makes one feel like this revolution did need to happen for the sake of these peoples well being.

The movie depicts very well the struggle for lower classes, the ghettos where many people were forced to live, and the American influence on people who did not seem to want it. American was very much portrayed as the big brother that picked on the little brother, which depending on ones perspective, they could be seen that way. The economic depiction of these people coincides with Susan Eckstein’s description of what the economic world was before the revolution. Her details and charts could get extremely confusing to someone who is not an economist but it was clear that the point she wanted to make was that the revolution was a very good thing for the people economically. The rich might not have benefited and therefore most fled the country and it equalized the country greatly. This thought is a very encouraging one to read after seeing a movie so filled with sadness and economic struggles.

Through both the Eckstein and the de la Fuente articles the phrase “with all and for all” seems to pop up frequently, especially in the Fuente one. This idea of Cuban’s being segregated by race and racial issues is not a topic that could easily be picked up by the movie, which is quite distressing. Both articles deal greatly with how much of an issue the race question was in Cuba, a white Cuba versus a mixed Cuba. The movie does not seem to show this that clearly, it depicts Cubans as being united in knowing that a revolution needs to occur to better themselves more for economic reasons than for racial equality. However, this unity is expressed well in the Fuente article when it says “They were neither black nor white, but Cubans”. That line seems to boil everything in the movie down even though race did not seem like such a huge factor. When it came down to the need or revolution, race did not matter. Making a better life for their selves and making a better Cuba did matter.

The best line from the Fuente article was a citation that he made, "Cuba's soul is mestizo (half- breed),"Nicolas Guillen (1972, vol. 1: 114) wrote in 1931, "and it is from the soul, not the skin, that we derive our definite color. Someday it will be called 'Cuban color.'" It feels as if this is the best depiction of the movie and of Cuba. In the end race did not matter, revolution did and a revolution could not occur with just one racial group backing it. They needed the whole of Cuba to participate. Racial lines could have broken the entire movement but it did not and that seems to be the moral of the story.

Gabriela & Social Change

Gabriela is a very sexual heated movie that has obvious and underlying themes of change and progress. This progress comes in many forms and really shapes the entire movie. Gabriela herself is a woman of change, she fled the drought and shows up in a new town covered in mud and looking for a job that could help her progress in her life. Here is where she meets mister Nacib. In his eyes she’s the perfect woman, beautiful, skilled in the culinary field, and willing to negotiate her own costs. All things considered, she is a pretty modern day woman for 1925. She loves becoming his mistress and does not seem enthused by the idea of marriage. Nacib is the one who wants to marry her and look proper in front of his gentleman friends which is the point that causes so much tension and drama for Nacib and the people of this time.

            At this time period it is more about how people see you and perceive you than anything else, hence by this drama of “crimes of passion” comes into play. From the beginning of the movie you see a man walk in on his wife and a dentist and shoot them both. It’s a scandal throughout the town because some people seem to believe that he was in the right to do what he did and that it makes him a man. Others believe that it was wrong, in the movie it is the manly political crowd who believe that he was in the right to do what he did. No one even attends these people funerals when they are brought through the street; everyone just gawks at their dead bodies being carried through the streets. Besse talks all about this social change in Brazil and how it was not brought about because people cared that these women were being shot but because they cared about the social structure of the family and what good it could do for politics and the stability of normal life. This entire movement to get crimes of passion outlawed took years in the real world but this movie condenses it down so people can really get the feel for the affect that this had. The movie portrays quite well that it was not about women’s well being but about politics. In the end the man who killed his wife and the dentist is charged with murder as compared to let off the hook because he was just in a fit of passion or rage. This is the social changed that happened during this time.

            Nacib is at first ridiculed for not killing Gabriela when he finds her in bed with another man but when he proves that the marriage was false to begin with, he is now socially accepted by society again. It then is evident that he can keep Gabriela as a mistress but not as a wife and he will be allowed to fit into the society that he so desperately wants to be a part of. Overall, this movie depicts this particular social change very well and shows the attitudes of the people involved very nicely.

Camila - the melodramtic wonder

The move Camila directed by Maria Luisa Bemberg is a melodramatic love story of Camila O’Gorman and Jesuit priest, Ladislao Gutierrez. It is the stereotypical story of a young woman who is swept off her feet by a man that she can not dream of being with. Therefore, he is precisely who she dreams of being with, and when her dream come true, all havoc breaks loose and social norms are thrown out the window all for love. Romantic right? Not when the end results in both lovers dead from breaking said social norms, that tends to take the romance down a few notches.

            After reading Stevens’ article on the movie, one gets the distinct sense that the movie is very historically accurate which is quite refreshing. Throughout the movie they use actual lines from O’Gorman’s actual letter to Rosas and discusses how much of the story that we know of Camila and Ladislao was learned by her jailor. The article really gives a good historical background for both of these main characters families. The article also sheds a different light on Camila’s father. In the movie he comes off as a tyrant and just an overall not so nice of a person. In this letter to Rosas, he does not appear to be sentencing his own daughter to death like the movie portrays him, it is evident however, that he was more concerned with saving his family’s name than saving his daughter. Dore’s reading which was honestly a bit confusing backs up this ideology. It seems as if around the time of Camila’s life that marriage and family changed and that the patriarch of the family really started to hold more control over that aspect of life which fits in perfectly with this story and his reaction to her running away with a priest.

            The most interesting thing about the movie was the perspective by which it was told. Both Hart and Stevens make it clear through quotes that Bemberg wanted Camila to be a progressive, strong willed woman who knew exactly what she was doing. She comes off as being the seducer, not the stereotypical helpless woman. This role seems doubtful but all of these articles seem to back this perception up. Camila loved Ladislao, she made sure that her jailor knew this; she knew exactly what she was getting into and was okay with it. The movie does add a clever spin by making Ladislao seem like the lady in the relationship. He always seems to be so scared and reliant on either Christ or Camila that his love almost seems pathetic. Bemberg definitely achieved her goal of making Camila a strong woman throughout the entire movie.

            In conclusion, this movie stayed oddly accurate given the information that is available on the real life Camila and Ladislao. This accuracy is quite refreshing and told in a way that it still captures your heart and your mind. By the end of the movie, you are rooting for the couple; you do not want them to die by laws that are cruel and unjust. Overall, this movie was very well done and hit that melodramatic feel that the director was looking for.

The Mission, my analysis

My initial reaction to the movie, The Mission was one of utter depression. I left class feeling significantly sadder than when i had entered the classroom at 2:30. However, after reading these various articles about other indigenous uprising and the historical critique of the movie itself, I find myself even more depressed and oddly angered by what I have read. My anger is not what one would typically think though, I find myself completely undisturbed with the historical inaccuracy of the movie. Truthfully, it's quite the opposite. I do not know about anyone else but I would not wanna watch a movie that showed the oppression of the indigenous peoples of this area to historical accuracy. When i watch a movie, especially one that is supposed to be based on something that has happened in the past, I do not want to be reminded about how terrible everyone was to people of different races and ethnicities. As a history major, I read about that everyday. I want my movie to have some sort of uplifting quality. I enjoyed reading in "Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness" that local people did not always just take things as they came, they did not always just roll over and take what was happening to them for what it was. I enjoyed in the movie that the Jesuits took the side of the people, little theatrical changes like this make it seem like people in the past had some sort of humanity. Portraying them in a way that would be "historically accurate" seems like it would take all of the humanity out of these people and make them the vilians. Sadly enough, they were villians but even worse they typically felt justified in their actions against people who they saw as being below them. How is a director supposed to fit all of this into a two hour movie and not leave people just feeling utter depressed at the end? We can not fix the unjustices of the past but we can however make movies that spark peoples interest in the past that get them into researching what really happened. You may never know, but some non-history major could've seen this movie and then went and really looked into the truth of the matter and became enlightened on the past even though the intial spark of this search was one based on inaccuracies.

I certainly can not say that this was one of the best movies that I have ever seen, certain parts made no sense, ex. the priest tied to the cross, or a slave trader seeking forgiveness not from God but from the people with whom he used to enslave. The movie as a whole was not bad and despite the lack of historical backing, I found it insightful and it did spark an interest in me to really read these articles and really find out what the truth was because this is not a subject that one hears about often if at all.

Therefore, my opinion on this controversy of historical accuracy does not really register as a huge issue to me and as a history major that seems quite peculiar I know. Obviously, I do enjoy a movie that can incorporate true facts and theatrical dramatization of events to really give one a visual idea of how things happened but sometimes it's okay to just have a movie that sparks interests or a hint of knowledge on a subject that one probably would not have thought about before ever seeing the movie.