Another theme film of the fourth and final class on Cinema Novo that I watched was Macunaíma. In fact, I had watched it a couple of times before. Directed by Joaquim Pedro de Andrade based on the book of the same name by Mário de Andrade.

In the cast, Paulo José (mother of Macunaíma and Macunaíma white), Grande Otelo (Macunaíma black and son of Macunaíma white), Milton Gonçalves (Jiguê), Rodolfo Arena (Maanape), Dina Sfat (Ci), Joana Fonn (Sofara), Jardel Filho (Venceslau Pietro Pietra), among others.

Macunaíma, defined by his brother at birth as a national hero, after his mother's death leaves a tapera where he lived in the middle of the forest for the big city with Jiguê and Maanape, his brothers. Halfway there, he enters a spring of water and transforms into a white man. In the urban center, he meets Ci, a guerrilla who fights against the regime and falls in love with her, living at her expense, because he didn't like to work. In the end, he returns to the same tapera where he used to live, but is abandoned by his brothers because he continues to lie and not work. Finally, he has a meeting with Iara, the mother of the waters.

The film has a strong dialogue with Modernism, after all it is an adaptation of an iconic book of the movement, as well as with Tropicalismo, a movement that was born in the late 1960s, early 1970s.

The affirmation of a national culture, the strong use of colors and landscapes that praise Brazil are a constant in the film. Because it is inserted in a period when the military dictatorship was intensifying in the country, there are visual references to the period, such as police patrolling the streets of the big city and the presence of a guerrilla, who fought against the installed regime. The speech in the public square also indicates the political situation that Brazil was going through.

The anthropophagy launched by Brazilian Modernism is shown in the film in a surreal scene of the wedding of Venceslau's daughter, filmed in Parque Lage (Rio de Janeiro), with a pool full of blood and torn bodies, with their guts out, where, after a draw, the guests were thrown into the water and eaten by a being that does not appear.

Although I like the film, the clown tone of the characters bothers me a little (I have to say here that I have a trauma with clowns), as well as the exaggeration of acting in some scenes (Macunaíma's shrill cry when he is born or when he is contradicted, as a child, it is very annoying). Venceslau Pietro Pietra's characterization is purposely exaggerated, leaving Jardel Filho unrecognizable.

Criticism of racism (the transformation of Macunaíma from black to white when he goes to the city), to the conservatism of part of society, precisely the one that supported the military regime (speech in the square interrupted by Macunaíma), to corruption (Venceslau is a corrupt businessman) are present in the script.

The final scene, with a green garment in the water being invaded by the red blood of Macunaíma is a very strong allegory to the military regime, which tortured and killed the regime's opponents.

All in all, a good movie, a classic of Brazilian cinema.

For those who are wanting the essential background knowledge of Brazil's past turmoil, chances are one (like this reviewer) may find themselves unable to suffer fools gladly of Joaquim Pedro de Andrade's cinematic adaptation of Mário de Andrade's titular modernist novel.

Macunaima is the son of an indigenous woman who lives in the jungle with her two other sons, the white-skinned Maanape (Arena) and the dark-skinned Jigue (Gonçalves), and Macunaima, first played by the diminutive black actor Grande Otelo smack out of his mother's womb, is, according to the voiceover, "a hero without a character", and indeed we are instantly seized by the film's foolishly nihilistic, surreal style that is vigorously honed by its vibrant palette, zippy rhythm and wacky performance, especially by Otelo, who makes a helluva fun as a bawdy tot inconceivably maturing into an adolescent man, during a roll in the hay with Jigue's lover Sofará (Fomm), magic occurs, he becomes a handsome white man (José, who also plays the role of the brothers' mother). Pigmentation matters, even for the primordial libido.

The family's tapir-hunting good old days come to a halt when the mother dies abruptly (after Macunaima having a brush with a cannibalistic man), whereupon the brothers moves from the tribal land to Rio de Janeiro. Macunaima is captured by a feral guerrilla fighter Ci (Sfat), together they have a son (Otelo again), but bereavement soon catches up with him, and the desultory plot takes him up against a giant merchant Wenceslau Pietro Pietra (a funnily bulked up Filho), who inexplicably has the amulet from the deceased Ci, during which a cross-dressing Macunaima tries to seduce him only to no avail, and many a raunchy snippet punctuates the story with fitful energy and idiosyncrasy, some are hilarious but all shy of a sense of reverberation.

When the wrangle with Wenceslau reaches its improbable coda (a giant swing and a swimming pool full of dismembered bodies make unusual bedfellows to settle the dissension), Macunaima and his brothers returns to their sylvan turf, and this cradle-to-grave rhapsody ends with an inane splash that a connection towards this hammock-lying imbecile is rendered futile.

High on narcissism and male chauvinism, distaff parts are patly sexualized and depicted as erotomaniacs, Joaquim Pedro de Andrade's MACUNAIMA dates quickly in its ideology and mores, but on a lesser note, its visual grotesquerie makes it a curio worth visiting, better, if one can comb through its social analogy which is by default missing from this reviewer's limited perspective.