What Daniel Rezende wants to convey with this film is that hate is not an incurable disease. Love is all that is needed to overcome it.
The world is plunged into chaos. Community violence is rampant, would-be dictators occupy the positions of president and prime minister, the LGBTQ+ community still faces enormous difficulties in accepting its true identity in most countries, and hate speech is openly delivered at public gatherings and political rallies, while law enforcement is compromised. With The Son of a Thousand Men, Daniel Rezende points out that hate has always been present in our society. It is not a new disease. The film, adapted from Valter Hugo Mãe's novel of the same name, is set in the mid-20th century and doesn't look very different from our current reality.
Director: Daniel Rezende
Writers: Duda Casoni, Valter Hugo Mãe, Daniel Rezende
Stars: Rodrigo Santoro, Rebeca Jamir, Miguel Martines
A grandfather tells a boy to stay away from "effeminate men" and "lesbians." A woman with dwarfism is mocked by her neighbors (who say that a man with a "big heart" would destroy her organs). One mother considers killing her son for being gay, "different," and "weak." Another mother limits her daughter's future by forcing her into marriage; it's all she knows, all she teaches her. It's clear the mother herself is far from happy, but she's so deeply conditioned by her parents and so deeply rooted in an orthodox society that she's incapable of contemplating, much less accepting, new ideas about life.
In fact, most of the characters are as traditional as that mother in the film. However, they function as secondary characters, influencing the main plot from a distance, like dangerous whispers trying to poison the ears of the protagonists, who are the central focus of this story. Someone like Francisca (Juliana Caldas) bravely fights against gossip, though that doesn't mean she isn't occasionally hurt by idiotic comments and the contemptuous gaze of her community.
Then there's Isaura (Lívia Silva as a young girl; Juliana Caldas as an adult), who, as a child, is unable to confront her mother's backward thinking. Even Antonino (Antonio Haddad as a young boy; Johnny Massaro as an adult) is forced by his mother, by society, to repress his homosexuality. In a dream sequence, he masturbates thinking about other boys, and they begin to attack him. You've surely heard of the feeling of butterflies in your stomach. Here, we see a room full of butterflies, which die along with Antonino's sexual fantasy.
What Rezende wants to convey with this film is that hatred is not an incurable disease. Love is all that is needed to overcome it. To illustrate this point, we have a character, a boy named Camilo (Miguel Martínez), who finds himself in the middle of a bridge whose ends lead to conventional and progressive ideas. Part of Camilo is influenced by the "wisdom" of his grandfather, who dictates that "effeminate men" and "lesbians" are enemies, while the other part is learning liberal beliefs from Crisóstomo (Rodrigo Santoro), who bathes in golden light like a saint upon seeing his new family united. Crisóstomo, after all, means "golden mouth," and his progressive ideas are the gold that flows from his lips.
If this play on words with the name seems obvious to you, wait until you see the film. It's full of obvious details, obvious moments, obvious scenes. Rezende isn't aiming for "subtlety." He wants to create a poem with a "lyrical" aesthetic. However, the frames resemble slowly fading postcards. The images aren't expressive; they're purely decorative. They're a visual treat, ready to be captured and used as wallpaper or hung on the wall to create ambiance.
By focusing more on the aesthetics of his film and presenting the text as an explicit moral lesson, Rezende loses sight of his characters' emotions and ends up offering a parade of scenic beauty. The story earns our appreciation for its complex, interconnected plots that oscillate between past and present, but this structuring also feels like mere embellishment, just another ornament in a superficially attractive design. The Son of a Thousand Men, then, is the work of a decorator admiring his decorations and smiling. Rezende has good intentions; they are sincere. However, those good intentions are deceptive, serving primarily as an excuse for the filmmaker to showcase his cinematography.
Comments
Post a Comment