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None of this, however, is in Lula, Son of Brazil, the two-hour epic that opens across Latin America's biggest nation on Jan. 1. With a secondary billing that goes "You know the man, but you don't know his story," the film vaults through the episodes that marked Lula's early years and his remarkable rise from poor to powerful. Starting in the scrubland of the northeast, where he was born one of eight kids, it follows him to São Paulo, where he suffered at the hands of an abusive and alcoholic father. It shows...
Little-known actor Rui Ricardo Dias does a fine job portraying Lula from young man to adult, but the film glosses over Lula's frailties, depicting him as a man who can do no wrong. "The director omitted episodes in Lula's life that suggest the President has weaknesses or defects," said Veja, a popular right-wing newsmagazine. "Basically, it's a terrible film," wrote critic Ricardo Calil...
...some of Lula's rough edges but says such is the concessionary nature of making biopics. "It's a film, and cinema is about choices. You have to leave things out," Barreto tells TIME. "What was important was that I wanted to portray that conciliatory side of him - the man who brought people together, who always wanted to talk and negotiate and was never radical...
...problem is that portraying Lula as a saint stretches credulity. Brazilians know and admire the man who dragged himself up from poverty to become President of the world's fifth most populous nation. But while the film ends in 1980, the years since have produced a different Lula, the intemperate leader who swears in public and rails at the press for investigating graft, and whose government was tainted by one of the most egregious corruption schemes in Brazilian history...
...international furor over China's execution of a British man convicted of heroin-trafficking has drawn attention to the country's harsh criminal-justice system. The execution has sparked a diplomatic row between China and the U.K., but global condemnation will do little to provoke reform. China is the world leader in the use of the death penalty - Amnesty International documented some 1,700 judicial killings in China last year, but the true total could be as much as three times that - and Beijing makes no apologies for its hard line. In a statement issued after the execution, a Chinese...