Marighella
By GL Harris
The film Marighella opens with black and white footage. We see soldiers on horses, men in uniforms and young men throwing tear gas canisters. Bodies of fallen civilians, one a motionless body of a girl, being carried away. There’s a scene in the film Selma (directed by Ava DuVernay) on the Pettus bridge when white Alabama state troopers attacked unarmed black protesters. This film’s startling violence reminds me of that film’s somber tone.
“In April 1964, a coup d’état removed President João Goulart from office and installed a military dictatorship in Brazil. The coup was backed by a large portion of the population, politicians, business men, the press and the US government. It was justified as a means to end corruption and stop the “Communist threat”, reads the opening quotes over the archival footage.
The film states this dictatorship lasted 21 years. “Civil rights were suspended and the press was gagged,
Congress was shut down and those who oppose the regime were tortured and killed. The resistance rallied the self-employed, farmers, religious leaders, artists, intellectuals, unionist, rebellious military and especially, students.”
In his first feature film, director Wagner Moura offers the story of Carlos Marighella played brilliantly by Seu Jorge (City of God). The Golden Globe nominated actor for Narcos, Moura has appeared in movies since 2000.
“Born in Bahia, grandson to Sudanese slaves, poet, Congressman, acclaimed writer, Victoria soccer team fan, and according to the dictatorship: Brazil’s number one enemy,” reads the quote in the opening.
Marighella, founder and leader of the Ação Libertadora Nacional (ALN), after breaking with the country’s Communist Party led the armed struggle to thwart the military dictatorship. The film shows this journey and those who fought alongside him. But it leaves out Marighella’s travel to Cuba, meeting with Che Guevara and his political tract he wrote in exile.
We see a man who seems to understand his destiny and that Fate has chosen him to awaken his country, at a very high personal cost. In a beautifully filmed night scene, on a waterfront where his son awaits him, the boy warns his father to prevent his arrest. Jorge perfectly captures the heartbreak of a father potentially sacrificing his only son for his cause.
The son reappears in a final scene as his mother cries out, “This man loved Brazil.”
The stellar cast show the complexity of a movement that operates outside of government and laws and civil society. The self-proclaimed revolutionaries talk about an “eye for an eye.” Their tactics ultimately fail because they are blinded as they are killed by the police and smeared in a campaign that calls them bank robbers and murderers. Brazil is at a similar crossroads, again. The government is led by those who look to the past and its repressive systems. Marighella has been banned in Brazil.
The film poses moral dilemmas and contradictions. We are shown a gentle man who tries to have his ALN members leave the country in anticipation of the oncoming retaliation, for their own safety and that of their families. As the web closes tighter around them, the detective leading the fight for his Brazil shows no mercy.
Like the ending of Bonnie and Clyde, you hope they make it but you know what’s coming.
Directed by Wagner Moura, Brazil, 2019, 155 min, drama, Portuguese with English