Quilombo (1984)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Director:

Carlos Diegues

Writers:

Carlos Diegues (writer)
João Felicio dos Santos (novel)

Release Date:

28 March 1986 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Palmares is a 17th-century quilombo, a settlement of escaped slaves in northeast Brazil. In 1650, plantation...

Plot Keywords:

Epic | South America | Slavery | Based On Novel

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Jonas Bloch	...	Samuel
Zózimo Bulbul
Emmanuel Cavalcanti
Arduíno Colassanti
Jorge Coutinho	...	Sale
Babaú da Mangueira
Roberto de Cleto
Chico Díaz
Aniceto do Império
Maurício do Valle	...	Dominingos Jorge Velho
Sabrina Fidalgo
Daniel Filho	...	Carrilho
Vera Fischer	...	Ana de Ferro
Léa Garcia
Milton Gonçalves
Thiago Justino
Marcos Konica
Carlos Kroeber
Swami Leeladahar
Eduardo Machado
Sérgio Maia
Scarlet Moon
Luis Motta
Zezé Motta	...	Dandara
Kim Negro
João Nogueira	...	Rufino
Waldir Onofre
Grande Otelo	...	Baba
José Márcio Passos
Paulão
Antonio Pitanga	...	Acaiuba
Camila Pitanga
Ruy Polanah
Antônio Pompêo	...	Zumbi (as Antonio Pompeu)
Telma Reston
Adalberto Silva
Eduardo Silva
Joel Silva
Joffre Soares	...	Caninde
Sandro Solviatti
Paulo Henrique Souto
Tony Tornado	...	Ganga Zumba
Dona Zica

Runtime:

119 min | USA:114 min

Country:

Brazil | France

Language:

Portuguese

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

CDK

historically interesting, but a horrible production

This film tells the true story of escaped black slaves who found their own mountain-top commune as free men in 17th-century Brazil. The story is interesting and edifying. However, this film -- as a film -- is terrible.

The soundtrack is not period music or tribal music. It is Afro-Brazilian pop music from the early 1980s. Battle scenes are fought to the sounds of cheesy pop rhythms best left to the disco or bad cops dramas. Admittedly, the lyrics are folk-ish tales of the slaves' heroism. The special effects are absurd. Rather than invoke the mysticism of African religion and atavistic beliefs, they merely make the film look cheap. They are completely unbelievable, and I don't mean merely in a sense of verisimilitude.

Life within the commune of Palmares could not have been the way it is portrayed in the film. For this society, as shown in the film, is one-part kibbutz, one-part Afro-pop festival. Moreover, it is almost embarrassing to watch the director play upon the clichés of blacks as talented singers and dancers who simply want to be happy. He portrays daily life as a series of dance parties in which the freed slaves paint themselves bright colors and whirl around to the strains of '80s pop music. On the other hand, they have an abundance of beautiful food, but the viewer hardly sees any work being done. The king inveighs against private property in a hackneyed and clichéd way. When a man complains that people are taking the vegetables that he has grown over many months, the king says, "What comes from the earth belongs to everyone, as the earth belongs to no one. If they need food, they have a right to take yours."

I am glad that I learned about this episode in history, but I am relieved that a film with such low production values and that trades upon such worn stereotypes would likely not be made today.