WHITE DEVIL BLACK GOD Movie Review

Deus e ο Diabo na Terra do Sol

Manuel and Rosa, an impoverished couple trying to survive in the drought-ridden Brazilian countryside of 1940, desperately grasp at various systems of belief, hoping to make sense of their chaotic world. Religious cults and gangs of self-proclaimed revolutionaries both turn out to be dead ends for the couple, but ultimately they come to the realization that servitude and slavery come in many forms—sometimes disguised as the church, sometimes disguised as the liberator—and that true awareness must first come from an internal revolution, in which colonialist frames of reference can only be replaced with an untainted perception of the reality of the Third World. The fourth film by Cinema Novo founder Glauber Rocha contains the seeds of what would be developed in his masterful Antonio Das Mortes, but Black God, White Devil is itself a formidable achievement. Filmed in an explosively stark black and white and edited with a driving, inevitable rhythm, this is a poetic vision of not only a specific time and place, but of human awakening from a complacency that is often so deep-rooted that it is no longer perceptible. Reminding us of that complacency was Rocha's calling, and he rose to it with artistry.

NEXT STOP … Antonio das Mortes, Ganga Zumba, Quilombo

1964 102m/C BR Yona Magalhaes, Geraldo Del Rev, Othon Bastos, Mauricio De Valle, Lidio Silva; D: Glauce Rocha; W: Glauce Rocha; C: Waldemar Lima. VHS FCT