Re: "Four Days in September"

[Jim Westrich <westrich@xxxxxxx>]

First, I want to make it clear that I generally enjoyed "Four Days in
September". [I will say I have also recently seen 2 other better South
American "political" movies (the amazing low-budget allegory "Moebius" from
Argentina and "The Shipwrecked" from Chile) but this is not a film review
group].  I also think that nearly all the people that I know on this list
would like the movie "Four Days in September" (if nothing but to find fault
in it).  How many movies have revolutionary Marxist terrorist's as
protagonists these days?

I thought Louis made a number of interesting observation's about the movie
and it deserved some of his criticism.  However, he was unnecessarily harsh.

>Director Bruno Barreto, best known for his "Dona Flor and Her Two
>Husbands," simply decided to dump the politics to make the film palatable.
>"I did not make a film about politics but about human beings. I did not
>make a film about ideas, but about the fears, desires and tensions involved
>in a specific episode. Besides, no one would be able to stand to listen to
>the actual way the terrorists spoke at the time."

Barreto sums up his movie and his approach quite well and I think this is
the strength of the movie.  I was quite moved by the attempt to portray the
"humanness" of all the parties involved (revolutionaries, secret police,
ambassador).  It certainly could be argued that this attempt was a bit
stiff at times but to see the American ambassador as a human being (as well
as a representative of the imperialist bourgeois pigs) was a strength of
the movie.  His little speeches of his "limousine liberalism" were quite
well done. It did not threaten my politics in any way or my condemnation of
the dictatorship and secret police to see a torturer concerned that his
love might not approve of what he does.

>Without politics, the film becomes a banal crime melodrama.
>To sustain the audience's interest, Barreto emphasizes human relationships
that >have little to do with politics.

First of all the film is very political even without a lot of "political
dialog" (it could very well been a lot more boring with it in).  Louis is
correct in that one could of made a "mass film" in which we see quite
clearly the revolutionary implications of Brazil 69 and I very well might
have enjoyed that but this is not that film.  The politics were about the
people.  The struggle was not just about capitalism and militarism v.
revolutionary heros but about who cooks dinner (or what one orders
takeout), about who tells who what to do and why, how people treat one
another, and whether one is creating revolution out of a community of
interests or an a priori conception of "what's right" for "our struggle."

>In the production notes, Fernanda Torres is contemptuous of the character
>she plays. She says, "Maria was sort of a 'sergeant' in the group, and, to
>my mind, the least credible character in the script. I wasn't alive when
>the kidnapping took place so I can't be sure if militant political women
>really behaved like that." One can only wonder why Torres accepted the role
>if she has so little identification with the character and shows so little
>interest in finding out about what made such a character tick. Perhaps
>there is no tradition of method acting in Brazil.

Her comments are interesting and she seemed a little out of place in the
film.  Anyway, I don't think she is Brazilian (my guess is that she is
Portuguese) because this is the first Brazilian film she appeared in (all
her other movies are European I believe).

>In a letter to his wife, Elrick confesses his inability to understand the
>fanaticism of Jonas. It never would have occurred to Leopoldo Serran, the
>screenwriter, to fill in some background on such a character. Like the rest
>of the people associated with the project, he was hostile to leftist
>politics. He kept resisting Barreto's invitation to write a script based
>on Gabeira's memoir. "I refused several times, because I disagreed with
>many of the leftist principles and practices, and I could not agree to do
>anything complimentary or biased."

This is an interesting statement and explains why the movie focused on the
"universal" virtues of the revolutionaries (compassion, commitment,
courage) and not any particular anti-militaristic or anti-capitalist insights.

>The same
>sense of indignation that committed him to peaceful change, however, must
>have fueled Jonas. It would have made for a much richer film if Jonas spoke
>openly about the circumstances that led him to such extremist politics.

I think that Jonas could have tip his hand more but the strength of the
movie was its subtlety.  The fact that Louis could conjure up such rich
detail about a character who gets 3-4 minutes of screen focus proves its
strength.

>Ultimately "Four Days in September" is repression without violence. It
>represses the real beliefs and the real motivations from the terrorist
>band, as much as a gag over the mouth of a prisoner does. As difficult as
>it would have been to translate the lives of terrorists into a commercially
>viable film, a production company with some sympathy for the left should
>have made the attempt. The director, the screenwriter and the actors are
>all complicit in covering up the history of the desperate and marginal
>Brazilian urban underground.

This is far from true.  This movie (even with it faults) portrays
revolutionaries as heros with courage, intelligence, compassion and doubts.
 I cannot speak to its historical accuracy but I could not help but feel
that it "seemed" very accurate.  Also, the movie captured all I needed to
fell about "repression" I did not need to see any violence.

Peace,

Jim