Macunaima

Macunaíma is born in a village in the forest. At birth he is a grown man; Black, idle, and refusing to speak. His first words are that he does not feel like doing anything. When his mother dies he sets out with his brothers. He bathes in a magic pool and turns into a white man. They reach São Paulo. In the city he meets a woman; she is in a guerrilla group and makes bombs. Then an amulet is lost and Macunaíma has to deal with an industrialist to get it back. Joaquim Pedro de Andrade writes and directs. Grande Otelo, Paulo José and Dina Sfat are in the cast. It is a Brazilian production. The source is Mário de Andrade's novel, published in 1928 and counted among the founding texts of Brazilian modernism. The film was made under the military government and uses allegory rather than direct political statement. The matter it treats is national identity; Macunaíma is a character with no fixed quality and the film makes that an argument. Its form is crude and colourful; the costumes are deliberately cheap, the acting exaggerated and the register like a carnival. The narrative uses the motif of cannibalism; the idea runs through Brazilian modernism as a cultural argument and the film also shows it literally. Its ending is extremely hard and offers no consolation. Its limit is accessibility; the references are local and the narrative deliberately inconsistent. Who it is for: viewers who like Brazilian cinema and allegorical narrative. Who it is not for: it is closed, the form crude, and some scenes uncomfortable.