Gonzaga: From Father to Son

Luiz Gonzaga comes out of the northeast. There is trouble at home and a love story ends badly; as a boy he enlists. Years later he is playing the accordion in Rio and nobody is listening. Then he starts playing the music of his own region and the country listens. Meanwhile he has a son: Gonzaguinha. The father is on the road and the boy grows up in someone else's house. The son becomes a musician too but makes another kind of music and finds his father's old fashioned. The two do not speak for years. The narrative puts them side by side on a car journey. Breno Silveira directs. Chambinho do Acordeon, Adélio Lima, Land Vieira and Júlio Andrade are in the cast. It is a Brazilian production. Its ground is real; Luiz Gonzaga is the best known name in Brazilian baião and his son Gonzaguinha was a well known singer too. The director had made a musician's biography before and uses the same structure here. The narrative alternates between two generations; the stories of father and son advance by crossing. The matter it treats is fatherlessness; the music is secondary and the real subject is a reckoning. The film takes the difference between the northeast and Rio as a direct subject. The songs are played in full inside the narrative and period recordings are used. The narrative does not absolve the father; he does not come home and does not explain it. Its limit is structure; the narrative is long, the biography runs flat, and the ending sentimental. Who it is for: viewers who like Brazilian music and musicians' biographies. Who it is not for: it is long, conventional, and the ending sad.