Word: tropici
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Dates: during 1969-1969
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...TROPICI opens in the brush of Northeast Brazil, where Miguel, a hired cattle herder, and his wife and children live. The owner of the herd has decided to move his cattle sough, and Miguel is now out of a job. Hearing of work in Recife, he buys passage on a truck for himself and his family, but fails to find employ there. A labor recruiter in Recife convinces him to make the long trip to Sao Paolo, again by truck. There he is hired as a construction worker on the Sao Paolo Hilton, and the films ends...
Such is the slight story of Tropici, a film about modern-day Brazil made by an Italian, Gianni Amico, for Italian television. But the content of Tropici is primarily political: the effects of foreign exploitation on a Third World nation. Amico has correctly realized that traditional narrative, no matter how portentous, is inadequate for describing a social reality that lies beneath surface story lines. Therefore he has interweaved his narrative with a conventional documentary which attempts to set Miguel's story in context, to explain in party why Miguel is unskilled, why a country so rich in resources...
...TROPICI'S narrative barely manages to hold one's attention. When the director isn't senselessly simulating documentary reality--for some incomprehensible reason he feels compelled to film every passenger clambering aboard the truck--he is indulging himself in cheap pyrotechnics. For what it's worth, a smidgen of narrative tension is supplied by a dissident passenger who knows what Sao Paolo holds and how their employers will treat them: "Your have to watch out for those gringoes ... they don't like paying money for nothing." He plans to give them the slip once they hit the city, or else...
...What Tropici does best is record the landscape of foreign business domination. Once we lose Miguel, Tropici is strewn with interesting shots of the billboards that blister the countryside of Brazil, shouting "Texaco" "Ford" "Esso" at the passing cars. But this is rather small accomplishment; it's all there, as obvious as a Wheaties box. Tropici is betrayed by Amico's failure to integrate his narrative and documentary concerns, to deal with them not in isolation but in interaction. This failure gives his statement on foreign exploitation the ring of a superficial overview, rendering it less forceful, less immediate...
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