Review by Beatrice On 01-Sep-2024
A good citizen is one who cannot tolerate in their homeland a power that claims to be above the law.
Brazil, 1970s
Military dictatorship.
The Paiva family, consisting of a father, mother, and five children, lives in Rio de Janeiro by the sea.
A family filled with love, rhythm, enthusiasm, culture, passion, life.
Marcelo Rubens Paiva, an engineer and former Labour Party deputy, is taken from his home by the military and never returns. On the same day, his wife and eldest daughter are also interrogated. Eurice, detained for a few days, becomes aware of the torture, harassment, baseless accusations, and violence inflicted.
The film reconstructs everything before and after the arrest: the waiting, hopes, struggles, all accompanied by the extraordinary story of Eurice, who graduated in law at the age of 48 to dedicate herself to human rights and militant activism.
The film extends to the present day, concluding with the death of this extraordinary woman after fifteen years of Alzheimer's, surrounded by her entire family.
The highly anticipated return of Walter Salles to the cinema, 12 years after his previous film, reconstructs an authentic story, the search for truth and justice, and the fight for rights by the wife of the former socialist deputy. Salles was a friend of the deputy's daughters and family.
Astonishingly perfect performances, an unrelentingly gripping reconstruction.
135 minutes of perfectly executed traditional cinema, meticulously reconstructed and portrayed. The emotional involvement in the family's story is inescapable and undeniable, achieved through the artistic construction of a narrative that needed to be told.
A poignant film that prompts reflection on dictatorships and the horrors they entail.
A reflection on habeas corpus, the legal basis for defending against unlawful arrest. It is an important tool for safeguarding individual liberty against arbitrary state action, applied in all Western legal systems but still failing to protect rights in cases like this.
The death certificate of Marcelo Rubens Paiva, issued by the democracy that followed the dictatorship, was the only realistic goal pursued by the family, who finally obtained a document acknowledging the disappearance and death of their relative, which had until then been omitted, denied, and ignored.
Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution to establish a dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
01-Sep-2024 by Beatrice