The Battle of Canudos

At the end of the nineteenth century, in a drought-stricken region of north-eastern Brazil, a settlement called Canudos is founded. At the head of the community is Antônio Conselheiro, whom the poor of the region take for a prophet. The landowners and the church are unsettled by it. The newly founded Republic, for its part, sees the settlement as a monarchist threat and sends the army against it. The film follows these events through a family that has taken refuge there. The war at Canudos is among the bloodiest internal conflicts in Brazilian history; the army mounted four expeditions and the settlement was destroyed completely in the end. Sérgio Rezende's film runs a hundred and seventy minutes and shoots its crowded battle scenes at a large scale. Cláudia Abreu, Marieta Severo and José Wilker are in the cast. The account makes Conselheiro neither a saint nor a madman; what it really looks at is how the Republic turned its own poor into an enemy. The subject was treated in Brazilian literature too, in Euclides da Cunha's book.