Word: macunaima
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Dates: during 1972-1972
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...humor rises and falls through each incident there is no climax to the film. Macunaima simply rollicks through Brazil until he dies, and the film ends, with the plot serving, as in a Marx Brothers vehicle, only to hold the episodes together...
...newest "new cinema," making politically relevant and thought-provoking films after years of stagnation and American imports. Many of the best of these films are simply banned and never heard of again, other are either too avant-garde or too boring to survive the first few showings. Macunaima, after a few cuts by the censors, has managed to avoid all these fates, and is now the most popular home product in Brazil's film history...
...Macunaima doesn't follow the Cinema Novo percepts. Going on the premise that politics is reality, writer-director Joaquim Pedro de Andrade has left all the heavy analysis behind and concentrated on a picaresque comedy that has about as much relevance as, say, the Marx Brothers--who did, to be sure, portray their share of dirty capitalists, insatiable lovers, and corrupt millionaires. The villain of Macunaima is just such a dirty capitalist, a fat greedy man who is eventually eaten alive in his own cannibal-capitalist swimming pool human soup when Macunaima, the hero, pushes him in. However, Macunaima himself...
...publicity and the director himself have made much of Macunaima as a political parable of contemporary life in Brazil: the hero's family, with members of all colors, represents the interrelation of Brazil's races; the people he encounters--police, gangsters, politicians, poor, rich--represent various sectors of society; and, most important of all, the recurring theme of cannibalism is a metaphor for the way in which Brazilian society is consuming itself. "Those who can," says de Andrade, "eat others through their consumption of products, or even more directly as in sexual relationships." That...
Coming to the city from the jungle with his two brothers, one black and one white, Macunaima is at first confused because he cannot tell the difference between men and machines. He quickly recovers equilibrium and shacks up with a female guerrilla. With great zest she makes war by day and love by night, while Macunaima spends his day lounging in her hammock...