Targeted to rich white Americans? What rich white Americans have seen this movie? I don’t know any. I don’t know if you know but this film did not make a lot of money here in the US. In fact, it’s only made $28 million dollars worldwide, hardly “Transformers”-like numbers. So if it was targeted towards rich white Americans, then it failed epically. The thing is, I don’t agree with that. I don’t think it’s an exploitation, to me it comes across as a brutally honest way of depicting the violence in Brazil. Have you talked to any Brazilians who have seen the film? I have, I happen to work with one. She couldn’t even finish the movie all the way through because it was too real to her, it hit WAAAY too close to home.
Maybe you should watch the film for what it is and not worry so much about how “nicely packaged” it is. I know you say you enjoyed the story, but your opinion appears to be more about the way it was marketed (in your eyes) than the actual contents of the film itself.
I think you need to read more newspapers and watch more news. I also suggest watching Carandiru and Pixote by Hector Babenco so you can have another point of view from another brazilian director on “how bad it is for people over there” As latin american I didn’t find the movie offensive at all, and I really don’t think Meirelles wanted to have “Americans” feel guilty nor he intended to have “Americans” do any thing about. And yes… it has beautiful cinematography due to the fact that the great Cesar Charlone is in charge. And please try to watch more films by Mereilles because I find your opinion about his Tarantino influence unfounded.
Also keep in mind that the story is told through the perspective of a photographer. So of course intensely visual, colorful imagery backs up his own particular viewpoint of the world, and is not just gloss to make it “pretty”.
—PolarisDiB
Drunken Father Figure of Old
So, while this movie is really enjoyable to watch, I feel like the very idea of the movie is pretty offensive. It’s a nicely Americanized, Tarantino-influenced film that uses music-video cinematography and is targeted to rich Americans to see how bad it is for “people over there.” It’s kind of an exploitation of white guilt, where we can all watch this big-budget movie and talk about how bad things are in Brazil and feel good about ourselves but not really do anything about it. It’s kind of revealing that the intertitles are in English. I feel like this movie and Slumdog Millionaire really show the “cosmetic of hunger” discussed in this article http://ejournals.library.vanderbilt.edu/lusohispanic/viewarticle.php?id=54&layout=html. So, even though I really enjoyed the way they handled the story, it ultimately leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth because of how nicely packaged it is. Anybody else?