Bacurau: Brazil in a nutshell

THIS ARTICLE HAS SPOILERS

Starting in August 2019, a question was constantly heard among “woke” Brazilians: “have you already seen Bacurau?”. The hard-to-categorize film directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles had won the Jury Prize (Prix du Jury) at Cannes earlier that year and by December Bacurau was chosen as one of the best movies of 2019 by many critics. It was unique, cathartic, anthropophagic and also an interesting portrait of current-day Brazil.

Teresa (Barbara Colen) arrives in Bacurau for her grandmother’s funeral. The whole town is there to say goodbye to the matriarch, including the only doctor of the place, Domingas (Sônia Braga). A few days after the funeral, strange things start to happen – like a horse stampede and the appearance of a drone shaped as an UFO. When they start being attacked, the only solution is to call the outlaw Lunga (Silvero Pereira) to help the town fight back .

Although the film can easily be appreciated by people of any nationality, some details can escape non-Brazilian watchers. They aren’t allegories: they are the most direct critics, because nowadays if you aren’t direct you aren’t understood. Let’s analyze and contextualize them:

Bacurau is a toponym – the name of a place. Bacurau is a small town, or district, in the Northeastern region of Brazil. Politically, it is an annex to the neighboring town of Serra Verde. Elections are coming, and the current mayor Tony Jr (Thardelly Lima) is campaigning. When he gets near Bacurau, one person gives the alert and everybody hides inside their houses. When Tony Jr steps down a garbage truck, there are no people in the streets. He brought food, medicine, coffins and books to donate to the people – and secure their votes. This is a century-long practice in Brazil called “voto de cabresto”, that is illegal in theory, but still common.

Bacurau is so small that it can’t be found on a map. Yet, somehow, a weird group has found the town. They are English-speaking people – lately it’s confirmed that they are Americans – and gun lovers who have only one goal: to kill. They want to enter Bacurau and shoot the populations as if it was a hunting trip.

With the Americans there are two Brazilians (played by Karine Teles and Antonio Saboia). They enter Bacurau riding motorcycles and talk to a few people to get to know the place. Once they are reunited with the Americans, they speak English and are put in their places. Here we have a dialogue that hits close to home for any smart Brazilian. It follows:

HE: – We come from a different region. We come from South of Brazil. A very rich region. With German and Italian colonies. We’re like you guys.

WILLY: – Like us? They are not white, are they? How can they be like us? We’re white. You’re not white.

Some people from the South and Southeast regions of Brazil think they are superior to people from the other regions, in special the Northeastern one. This often happens after elections, since the South and Southeast prefer to vote for right-wing parties, while the Northeast chooses left-wing parties most of the time – with a few exceptions, of course.

Some people from the South are also extra proud of their European heritage, and think they are superior to people from other regions and people from shanty towns – who don’t know about their heritage because their ancestors were slaves. So, these people who think they are superior think they are like Americans or Europeans- and they’re not. No matter how fair your skin is, you will never be considered white by an American if you weren’t born in the US. That’s why I believe Brazilians should stop with this vanity and embrace their Latino identities – in history, habits and lifestyle, we’re much closer to our Latin American neighbors than to white people from above the Equator.

But why are these Americans on a killing spree in Brazil? A definitive answer is never given, and we can create our own hypothesis. For instance, I observed that Michael (Udo Kier), their leader, is a sadistic, and I believe sadism is the only thing that moves their mission. In the end, sadism can be what moves serial killers and other kinds of assassins. Or do you think that, underneath the “superiority of the Arian race” speech, the Nazis weren’t happy to see others suffer?

When Josh, one of the Americans, shoots a child, his mate Terry gets mad. Josh justifies his action by saying he thought the boy had a gun, when in fact he had a flashlight. Earlier, Josh said he was there for the body count. Josh is just like those crazy-for-guns Americans who blame the victim for being shot. He’s like police officers who say the black victim had a gun in his hand – when in reality he had something like an umbrella or a book.

Terry says he wanted to shoot and kill someone after his divorce. He couldn’t kill his wife, neither he could start a mass shooting at a mall and a park. But God allowed him to vent his hate and frustration in Bacurau. He probably thinks that the people of Bacurau are inferior.

As a mishmash of genres, Bacurau remembers Tarantino’s work, with the difference that Tarantino usually makes an amalgam of his influences, while in Bacurau the influences were used to create something completely new and refreshing. Like Sergio Leone’s magnificent take on the Mexican Revolution, “Duck, You Sucker!” (1971), Bacurau is dusty, gory and has a perfect soundtrack.

Bacurau served as a catharsis more than a call to arms. In fact, in our whole history, never has a popular rebellion been successful – not even the ones in self-defense, like the one in Bacurau. So, how do we counter-attack when we are attacked?

Well, the first option should be through vote. Yet, in 2018, when a candidate openly defied democracy in a democratic election, one third of the voters preferred to not show up or to annul their votes. Antonio Gramsci had a saying about this:

“The indifference is the deadweight of history. […] It is the raw material that ruins intelligence. That what happens, the evil that weighs upon all, happens because the human mass abdicates to their will; allows laws to be promulgated that only the revolt could nullify, and leaves men that only a mutiny will be able to overthrow to achieve the power.”

Well, indifference brought us here – in need to survive like those in Bacurau. When does one civilization cross the line and civil disobedience isn’t enough anymore? I don’t know, but Brazil has crossed this line.

The ones leading the resistance are uncommon characters: Teresa, Domingas, Lunga, Plinio (Wilson Rabelo) and Pacote (Thomas Aquino). They are women, black people, a teacher (currently one of the worst enemies of the government) and a gender nonconformist. They are the people also leading the resistance against the coup of 2016 – a coup denounced by director Kleber Mendonça Filho when he was in Cannes for the premiere of his previous film, “Aquarius” – and they, we, are the people still resisting against fascism and authoritarianism. Resistance is diverse, more than ever.

In a country where currently 12 million people are unemployed, the makers of Bacurau insisted on adding to the final credits: “the making and distribution of this film generated more than 800 direct and indirect jobs. Besides being the identity of a country, culture is also an industry.” Furthermore, over 700,000 people went to see the film, that was in cinemas for 20 weeks – a huge milestone in a country where there are hundreds of small towns without movie theaters and the movie theaters in big cities usually only show Hollywood blockbusters.

And that’s not all: since the beginning of his government, Bolsonaro is on a crusade against culture, artists and cinema. He has criticized the funding of films through the Rouanet Law, has censored productions about LGBT+ themes and has signaled that only productions about “Christian and conservative values” will be approved – you can read more about these attacks to culture HERE. And yet Bacurau was a success, showing that cinema generates jobs and income.

It’s interesting that the guns used by the population to counter-attack were taken from the local museum, a museum very much like all small-town museums. Bacurau was shot in the first half of 2018, a few months before the National Museum of Brazil, in Rio, caught fire and hundreds of artifacts were lost. At the time, the electoral campaign was going on, and Jair Bolsonaro said he could do nothing about the museum. Once as president, he showed again and again his disdain for education, culture and memory – the very things that make it possible for the people of Bacurau to survive. If it wasn’t for that museum and for a school that serves as shelter, they would be massacred.

Bacurau is a film about the collectivity. No character shines more than other, and they wouldn’t survive if they didn’t work together. This is a lesson for modern times, with individualism winning over team effort, and a good reminder during the current coronavirus pandemic and fascist crusade we’re going through: there are enemies that we can’t fight alone.

Bacurau represents Brazil more than soccer and samba.