Macunaíma (film)

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Movie
German title Macunaíma
Original title Macunaíma
Country of production Brazil
original language Portuguese
Publishing year 1969
length 110 minutes
Rod
Director Joaquim Pedro de Andrade
script Joaquim Pedro de Andrade
production Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, Kiu Eckstein
camera Guido Cosulich
cut Eduardo Escorel
occupation

Macunaíma is a Brazilian feature film from 1969. It is based on the 1928 novel Macunaíma - The hero without any character by Mário de Andrade (original title: Macunaíma: o herói sem nenhum caráter ). It is the best known and most commercially successful example of the “cannibalistic-tropicalistic phase” of Cinema Novo . Directed by Joaquim Pedro de Andrade .

action

The film begins with the birth of the "hero without any character" in a hut in the middle of the Brazilian jungle. He's small, black, and ugly. For the next few years he sits in front of this hut, watches his brothers Jiguê and Maanape at work and bites the ants off the heads. He has a lot of fun, especially with Sofara, Jiguê's wife, who gives him interesting things to smoke when she is alone with him in the jungle. Sofara's witch's herb transforms Macunaíma into a beautiful, naturally white prince, with whom she then plays her games - until Jiguê catches them both.

When Macunaíma behaves particularly mean and selfish, he is abandoned by his mother. He wanders around the jungle and meets the Curupira , who cuts meat from his leg and eats it. Macunaíma asks the curupira for a piece, whereupon the curupira cuts off a strip for him too. When Macunaíma has eaten it, the curupira, who is not a friendly meat distributor but a man-eating forest demon, tries to catch Macunaíma with a ruse in order to eat him and in this way to regain his leg, but Macunaíma can escape with difficulty.

Then the mother dies and Macunaímas brothers decide to leave the jungle and move to the city. On the way there you come to a spring that suddenly gushes out of the ground. Macunaíma jumps into the beam and is turned into white. Before the dark-skinned Jiguê can also be transformed, the source dries up. But Macunaíma is now a handsome white man and accordingly successful with women. He moves in with the urban guerrillas Ci and has such a good life: she goes into town to fight in the morning, he rests and in the evening you wallow in the booty of Ci's last bank robbery in passionate love games. After 6 months, a black son is born as a result of these games (played by Grande Otelo again), but his mother and son die when one of Ci's bombs explodes prematurely.

Macunaíma is overwhelmed by grief and abandons herself completely to drunkenness and indolence, from which he first rips a newspaper photo showing a certain Venceslau Pietro Pietra with a muiraquitã , which he allegedly found in the belly of a catfish . The Muiraquitã is an amulet , a lucky stone in the shape of a frog, which comes from the Icamiabas , a legendary tribe of Amazonian warriors. By owning this lucky stone, Pietra became immensely rich and became an industrial giant. This Muiraquitã had once belonged to Ci and Macunaíma decides to bring the stone back into his possession. He tries to sneak into Pietra's disguised as a woman, he tries Candomblé , and finally even politics (quote: "People! Brazil's problems are: too many leaf cutter ants and too little health!"), But none of his attempts lead to Success.

Finally, with the help of a maid, he gets to the house of the giant, who is on a trip to Europe, but is caught by his wife and daughter. They get ready to cook it, because the giant is actually Piaimã , an ogre , and his wife and daughter are also cannibals. However, with the help of the youngest daughter, who does not want to eat him but rather wants to make it, he can flee again.

But all is not lost, because after the giant has returned from Europe, he invites Macunaíma to his daughter's wedding. It's a lavish party: a lottery is held on the edge of a pool filled with body parts. Whose number is drawn will be pushed into the pool, where it will perish and then be eaten. That should also be the fate of Macunaíma, but he succeeds in turning the tables and taking the muiraquitã from the giant, before he himself falls into the pool by Macunaíma's arrow.

Now rich and happy, with a boat full of home electronics and a new wife named Princess, Macunaíma and his brothers return to the jungle. But when Macunaíma falls back into his old laziness, his brothers and his wife leave him and he remains alone in the dilapidated hut in which he was born, eats cashew nuts and bananas and tells a parrot his life story. When he finally got up one day because the urge was urging him, he saw a beautiful naked girl in a pond. But it is not a girl, but the Uiara , an ogre . Macunaíma takes off his clothes, takes off the muiraquitã, and jumps into the pond. This is his end.

reception

In early 2000, the film was digitally restored on the initiative of Alice de Andrade, the director's daughter.

Awards

  • 1969 Candango Trophy of the Festival of Brazilian Cinema in Brasília:
    • Best script for Joaquim Pedro de Andrade
    • Best Actor for Grande Otelo
    • Best Supporting Actor for Jardel Filho
    • Best outfit and costumes for Anisio Medeiros
  • 1970 Best Film at the Mar del Plata Film Festival

Quotes

“It is politically incorrect in terms of race and race relations, but in a very Brazilian way. I think it is a portrait of our melange. ... It engages in the discovery of the contradictions of our people. "

“The film is not politically correct about races and their relationships, but in a very Brazilian way. I mean, it's a representation of our racial mishmash. ... He tries to expose the contradictions of our people. "

- Milton Gonçalves (performer of Jiguê)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. The version broadcast by ARTE 2010 was 99 minutes long, which is also the length of the DVD version.
  2. Sauva in Brazil.
  3. Piaimã means "stranger" among the Taulipang . See Renata R. Mautner Wasserman: Pregüiça and Power: Mário de Andrade's “Macunaíma”. In: Luso-Brazilian Review, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Summer 1984), p. 111
  4. ^ Reed Johnson: Satire, in the face of repression. Article in the Los Angeles Times on June 17, 2009