The Kingdom of Shadows

So... Macunaima is another movie that is not available in America, and so I doubt many of my readers will take the time to find it, but if you have had the chance to see this movie and missed it, then I would hope after reading this review you'll be disappointed to near the point of suicide.

Macunaima is a surrealist comedy and like all surrealist comedies there's very little purpose describing the point. Since this comedy has a 'point' though I should loosely describe the film:

A woman in the jungle gives birth to a baby (played by a full grown man), after growing up and the mother dying, the boy, his father and his brother go to the city, but on the way they run into a magic spring that turns Macunaima white (and handsome). When they get to the city they run into a terrorist revolutionary woman, who Macunaima has wild sex with, until she is accidentally blown up by her own bomb.... that's the first 20 minutes of the movie, you should get the point by now (though i should mention that there are cannibals later on).

The film is based on a book, and the filmmaker had said that he could not get his head around the story until he heard that the author described the film as being about "a man who is swallowed by his country." This comes across clearly in the movie. When a political soap box preacher is talking about the plagues of Brazil as debauchery, theft, and left wing politicians,
Macunaima pushes him off the box, and starts saying "this man is crazy! the plagues of Brazil are Tuberculosis, Cholera and too many ants!" The rich literally eat the poor, whiteness is his ticket everywhere. And while, Macunaima consistently outsmarts all the people who are after him without even trying (he's mostly concerned with sex), he ends up being swallowed by the jungle in the end.

People might be falsely thinking at this point that the film has some sort of sense to it, but really all of the things I just described are "feelings" to the movie. The progression of the plot is complete and utter nonsense, which is whats so great about the movie. If surrealism is about the physical manifestation of desire, this film is about the constant battles between desire and the forces of society, where desire, and the human, can only win through total absurdity.

I don't think anyone's killing themselves over that review.... I'll try harder next time.