Macunaima (1969) Poster

(1969)

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8/10
Non-Sense, Anarchic, Crazy and Surrealistic Brazilian Cult-Movie
claudio_carvalho15 February 2004
Macunaíma (Grande Otelo / Paulo José) is a lazy anti-hero born black in Amazonas. After the death of his mother, he moves with his two brothers to Rio de Janeiro, but along his journey, he baths in a fountain and becomes Caucasian. Once in Rio, he incidentally meets the killer guerrilla woman Ci (Dina Sfat), who wears an amulet made of stone, and they fall in love for each other. They live together and a couple of months later, Ci delivers a black baby. While carrying a bomb for a terrorist attack in the stroller, the bomb explodes and Ci and the baby die, and the amulet vanishes. A very strong man finds the stone and Macunaíma tries to recover it. In the end, he returns to the jungle.

"Macunaíma" is a non-sense, anarchic, crazy and surrealistic Brazilian cult-movie and I am not sure whether a foreigner may like it or not. The story is funny, and belongs to a very specific moment of the history of Brazil, with the "Cinema Novo" ("New Cinema") and "Tropicalismo" movements and the military dictatorship. Further, it is absolutely original and unique, without any reference to another movie or use of clichés. Just as a curiosity, the rigid censorship in 1969 did not allow to expose two breasts at the same time. It was permitted to show one, but not both of them. The viewer can note that specially when Dina Sfat is in the kitchen wearing no shirt. When she turns, her left breast is covered by an object that she is holding. Today (04 April 2008) I have watched this film again, now in a magnificently restored (unfortunately very expensive) DVD. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): 'Macunaíma'
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7/10
Definitely an original
miszel7 December 2007
I'm not sure if I understood even half the cultural and political references this film makes. After all it is Brazilian and from the late 60's. In many ways a product of that era but because it seems to be based on fairy tales or legends there's an interesting timeless quality to it as well. That and the outrageous sight gags, combined with crazy costumes makes this seem like a live-action cartoon. Definitely a fun ride through jungles filled with carnivorous nymphs, machine-gun toting topless commandos, men changing race when they smoke marijuana, a piranha pool party and much much more! Well worth a look though you may need a friend versed in Brazilian history & culture to make sense of it all. The restored 2K print is absolutely gorgeous.
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8/10
A succesful attempt of entertaining anarchic and modernistic irony
turkerc29 September 2018
This film is hard to categorise because one can say that it is sincere, naturalist, mocking of urban life of metropols in Brazil; while being very entertaining and relatively easy to watch. Not quite knowlegdeable what is going on at that side of the ocean, I can only find the resemblances with my own country (Turkey), which is on par with Brazil in terms of industrialization, wealth and education. What you see in the film is streets are dangerous in many ways. Thievery, trickery and violence are present and politics are involved too. But it is very fortunate that this film is not totally a cold-hearted judgment of society of Brazil. Fantastic elements are incorporated so well that the result is very amusing in some sequences but it still leaves ashes in your mouth. Characters are greatly genuine and colorful and and script makes you curious about the book it is based upon. You just wanna watch more and you stumble upon its anarchic and modernistic wisdom. You needn't dig very deep to get the best out of this movie yet it touches nicely to the matters of society in Brazil. As you watch just be curious more and more about Brazil's problems. A very impressive movie hard to fault that deserves 8 out of 10.
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Andrade's widely suppressed post-Imperial anti-Cannibalism fable
scorsese220 December 2000
I first saw Macunaima in a World Cinema class here at Rutgers University. The film is about a native Brazilian born fully grown as he is depicted as defecated more than born, a dark Black baby to a White mother and all White siblings.Macunaima faces the harsh reality of his color, as he picks out the scraps a pig's end trails as his brothers eat the succulent flesh.He then finds a well which spurts water which turns him White, in a fantastically colorful sequence, Macunaima revels in his new color, as it changes his life and opens doors of opportunity to metropolitan Sao Paulo as he meets a guerrilla assassin femme fatale with whom he bares a Black child. She is killed, he seeks to avenge her death and realizes being White isn't all its cracked up to be. Macunaima has to wrangle with blood sucking neocolonialists. Despite its serious subject matter, Macunaima creates a carnivalesque atmosphere, light hearted wit and sexy mystique that defines Brazil
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7/10
Absurd farce that will make you think
samxxxul23 November 2020
I discovered this movie by chance so many years back when I was watching a film by Rogério Sganzerla. The first time I ever saw this movie was a hacked-up version of a torrent file. Even with all its naughty bits cut out, I could see this movie was a definite cult classic. When I finally got to see the whole thing during the lockdown, I could not stop laughing. It is a Bizarre political reading of Brazil with a lot of satire and is a kind of folk fairy tale told in a style that blends Terry Jones, Tomás Gutiérrez, Alea Mario Monicelli, Ulrike Ottinger with Jean-Luc Godard. Two major themes form the center of the film. On the one hand it is about racism, social class and anthropophagic portrait of Brazil. The second, major topic deals with miscegenation. For this reason, Joaquim Pedro de Andrade shifts the narrative perspective towards the big city after black Macunaíma turns white. As for the rest of the film, it's a mixed bag of weirdness--all cloaked in a strange and bizarre plot involving weird encounters and surreal sequences supported with an amazing soundtrack. In summary: if you're looking for a serious film that has terrific visual effects and absolutely no gaping plot holes, look elsewhere. I'd even go so far as to say that this film intentionally utilized poor visual effects and more than a few plot holes just to make the movie weirder. This is a big plus, and makes it all the more remarkable, because you can tell this was done on a small budget, but makes the best of it.
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10/10
Macunaima is simply one of the strangest and most comical Brazilian films ever made!
NateManD26 August 2007
Macunaima is Monty Python meets Jodorowsky and Robert Downey Sr. in a pool of piranhas. A full-grown black man, a " Brazillian hero", is birthed from a white woman in drag in the middle of the jungle. He discovers a magical water fountain that turns him white. He moves to the city, falls in love with a bomb bearing urban radical activist who wears a magic stone necklace that brings good luck. The magic necklace is stolen by a by an evil corporate cannibalistic millionaire. This causes a bomb to kill his wife and son (done in such a cartoonish way that it is all the more ridiculous). At this, Macunaima is plagued with bad luck through many of his misadventures and wants to get back the necklace from the evil corporate honcho. Part social satire, part serious political commentary set in a folklore steeped surreal Brazil. Based on the 1928 novel by Mario De Andrade that is considered on of the founding texts of Brazilian modernism; and the film itself is widely considered one of the most important films of the Brazilian Cinema Novo. But if you forget all the academics, it's a wild, weird, colorful, magical, surreal wonder-work with endless memorable moments, such as: a defecating goose, a pool of piranhas in which people swing above on a trapeze until they fall in, a water nymph and much more!! Who can forget such brilliant one liners such as "God gives nuts to those with no teeth". This film is a must see! One of the funniest films of any country! An underrated gem!
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7/10
Classic of brazilian cinema
lso-soares25 February 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Another theme film of the fourth and final class on Cinema Novo that I watched was Macunaíma. In fact, I had watched it a couple of times before. Directed by Joaquim Pedro de Andrade based on the book of the same name by Mário de Andrade.

In the cast, Paulo José (mother of Macunaíma and Macunaíma white), Grande Otelo (Macunaíma black and son of Macunaíma white), Milton Gonçalves (Jiguê), Rodolfo Arena (Maanape), Dina Sfat (Ci), Joana Fonn (Sofara), Jardel Filho (Venceslau Pietro Pietra), among others.

Macunaíma, defined by his brother at birth as a national hero, after his mother's death leaves a tapera where he lived in the middle of the forest for the big city with Jiguê and Maanape, his brothers. Halfway there, he enters a spring of water and transforms into a white man. In the urban center, he meets Ci, a guerrilla who fights against the regime and falls in love with her, living at her expense, because he didn't like to work. In the end, he returns to the same tapera where he used to live, but is abandoned by his brothers because he continues to lie and not work. Finally, he has a meeting with Iara, the mother of the waters.

The film has a strong dialogue with Modernism, after all it is an adaptation of an iconic book of the movement, as well as with Tropicalismo, a movement that was born in the late 1960s, early 1970s.

The affirmation of a national culture, the strong use of colors and landscapes that praise Brazil are a constant in the film. Because it is inserted in a period when the military dictatorship was intensifying in the country, there are visual references to the period, such as police patrolling the streets of the big city and the presence of a guerrilla, who fought against the installed regime. The speech in the public square also indicates the political situation that Brazil was going through.

The anthropophagy launched by Brazilian Modernism is shown in the film in a surreal scene of the wedding of Venceslau's daughter, filmed in Parque Lage (Rio de Janeiro), with a pool full of blood and torn bodies, with their guts out, where, after a draw, the guests were thrown into the water and eaten by a being that does not appear.

Although I like the film, the clown tone of the characters bothers me a little (I have to say here that I have a trauma with clowns), as well as the exaggeration of acting in some scenes (Macunaíma's shrill cry when he is born or when he is contradicted, as a child, it is very annoying). Venceslau Pietro Pietra's characterization is purposely exaggerated, leaving Jardel Filho unrecognizable.

Criticism of racism (the transformation of Macunaíma from black to white when he goes to the city), to the conservatism of part of society, precisely the one that supported the military regime (speech in the square interrupted by Macunaíma), to corruption (Venceslau is a corrupt businessman) are present in the script.

The final scene, with a green garment in the water being invaded by the red blood of Macunaíma is a very strong allegory to the military regime, which tortured and killed the regime's opponents.

All in all, a good movie, a classic of Brazilian cinema.
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9/10
A very fun surreal Brazilian classic
rehensle9 December 2020
If you like films like Jodorowsky's "The Holy Mountain", you will love Macunaima! Overall just a very fun spirited movie, and a very interesting perspective of the Tropicalia movement of the late 60's and early 70's of Brazil.
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7/10
de Andrade's MACUNAIMA dates quickly in its ideology and mores, but its visual grotesquerie makes it a curio worth visiting
lasttimeisaw11 June 2019
For those who are wanting the essential background knowledge of Brazil's past turmoil, chances are one (like this reviewer) may find themselves unable to suffer fools gladly of Joaquim Pedro de Andrade's cinematic adaptation of Mário de Andrade's titular modernist novel.

Macunaima is the son of an indigenous woman who lives in the jungle with her two other sons, the white-skinned Maanape (Arena) and the dark-skinned Jigue (Gonçalves), and Macunaima, first played by the diminutive black actor Grande Otelo smack out of his mother's womb, is, according to the voiceover, "a hero without a character", and indeed we are instantly seized by the film's foolishly nihilistic, surreal style that is vigorously honed by its vibrant palette, zippy rhythm and wacky performance, especially by Otelo, who makes a helluva fun as a bawdy tot inconceivably maturing into an adolescent man, during a roll in the hay with Jigue's lover Sofará (Fomm), magic occurs, he becomes a handsome white man (José, who also plays the role of the brothers' mother). Pigmentation matters, even for the primordial libido.

The family's tapir-hunting good old days come to a halt when the mother dies abruptly (after Macunaima having a brush with a cannibalistic man), whereupon the brothers moves from the tribal land to Rio de Janeiro. Macunaima is captured by a feral guerrilla fighter Ci (Sfat), together they have a son (Otelo again), but bereavement soon catches up with him, and the desultory plot takes him up against a giant merchant Wenceslau Pietro Pietra (a funnily bulked up Filho), who inexplicably has the amulet from the deceased Ci, during which a cross-dressing Macunaima tries to seduce him only to no avail, and many a raunchy snippet punctuates the story with fitful energy and idiosyncrasy, some are hilarious but all shy of a sense of reverberation.

When the wrangle with Wenceslau reaches its improbable coda (a giant swing and a swimming pool full of dismembered bodies make unusual bedfellows to settle the dissension), Macunaima and his brothers returns to their sylvan turf, and this cradle-to-grave rhapsody ends with an inane splash that a connection towards this hammock-lying imbecile is rendered futile.

High on narcissism and male chauvinism, distaff parts are patly sexualized and depicted as erotomaniacs, Joaquim Pedro de Andrade's MACUNAIMA dates quickly in its ideology and mores, but on a lesser note, its visual grotesquerie makes it a curio worth visiting, better, if one can comb through its social analogy which is by default missing from this reviewer's limited perspective.
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5/10
Overrated weird meeting between Cinema Novo and Chanchada
guisreis15 July 2021
Macunaíma is one of the weirdest films I have watched and, I may also state, is a quite overrated movie. An adaptation (probably a very personal and loose one) of modernist classic novel by Mário de Andrade (which I did not read), Joaquim Pedro de Andrade's Macunaíma is less magic but not more realist. Indeed, it seems to seek a cubist or mosaic-like outcome, such as the books's mood: it does it through changes in style and in characters' traits, and through a very chaotic story. Bright and colourful, noisy and alegoric, it was a meeting of Cinema Novo with Chanchada, two opposite Brazilian cinema "waves". Besides that, in many situations it emulates animated cartoon aesthetics, although doing it with live action in genrrally raw sets. It could have been nice, but serious sins led it to what I consider a failure. First of all: racism (the hero is considered ugly when is born as black but when becomes a handsome prince he is white Paulo José; not to mention the native characters who are whites or blacks); if there were ironies and sarcasm, it was supposed to be more clear and not open to be taken as acceptable. Secondly: mysoginy; there is a gag on sexual harassment and rape (not to mention the psychological role of all women in the whole movie)! I do not know if racist and sexist traits were already present in Mário de Andrade's book, or if they were there but in a more critical view of society and as an undoubtful mockery. The third sin is that the absurd situations, be them surrealist of absurd, should have been more well connected to each other. Unfortunately, seriously disagreeing with Brazilian experts, I think it lays far from what should be expected due the importance of the director and many actors: besides Grande Otelo, the best ever in Brazilian cinema and television, there are Hugo Carvana, Paulo José, Joana Fomm, Rodolfo Arena, Jardel Filho, Milton Gonçalves...
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10/10
A weird-comical-colorful masterpiece about Brazil
gustavo_ma9217 November 2008
Warning: Spoilers
I'm not sure if non-Brazilian people will completely get the message. The character of Macunaíma represents Brazilian natives. He is a critic made by Mário de Andrade through Brazilian Indian legends to Brazilian people. Of course it's all exaggerated in Macunaíma. It criticizes many aspects of the Brazilian way, for example all black people who want to be white(the episode of the magical fountain). The story of the book has been adapted to the 60's and set during the Brazilian military dictatorship. Macunaíma, "the hero without any character"(which also represents a break with the classical hero concept), hides food from his family, sleeps as much as he can, and cares only about himself. After they go to the big city, he meets a guerrilla-girl named Ci, which means 'mother' in the Tupi language, and marries her. They have a child, and then she dies and loses her Muiraquitã(a lucky charm), which is found by the villain Venceslau Pietro-Pietra(the cannibal bourgeois). Macunaíma then goes on a quest to recover it(because it would bring him good fortune), and goes to a Candomblé(an Afro-Brazilian religion) dance to set a kind of voodoo curse on Pietro-Pietra. This way, all Brazilian culture is mixed up in the film, in an "Antropophagical" way to symbolize every important aspect of Brazil. A beautiful way for Joaquim Pedro de Andrade to show his love for his country. He once said "I can only talk about Brazil".
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7/10
Macunaima thru its symbolisms exposes what really the Brazilian people means!!
elo-equipamentos9 March 2024
The immortal work of the writer Mario de Andrade wrote in far off 1928 Macunaima is regarded as essence of the Brazilian people as a whole, the director Joaquim Pedro de Andrade made an upgrade to late sixties to fit in at its period of time, in fact a rereading, due the subject is docked on symbolisms of our folklore, told with uttermost surrealism about an embodiment of Brazilian people on anti-hero Macunaima, was born black in a deep forest poorest and lazy, aftermaths becomes white to living in a large city together their brothers, where many misadventures take places to expose a man without any honor whatsoever, when he goes back to the jungle, thru this journey should be extract what really Brazilians mean by Mario de Andrade's concept.

Granted by the critics one top ten Brazilian movies of all time, it remains still encrypted by some, his Cult status didn't reach on lowest class due it was a harder interpretation to less literate, thus staying stuck in higher circles of society only, also his approaching of the Brazilian is controversial at least, nothing make sense, countless of mismatches it doesn't pleased the large majority quite sure, it's an art-movie and keep labeled as such, nonetheless wasn't a easy offering, therefore it needs be discovered through continues reassessments aiming for draw up newest insights.

Thanks for reading

Resume:

First watch: 1986 / How many: 2 / Source: TV-Youtube / Rating: 7.5.
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2/10
...what the hell??!
joaochicoazevedo2 July 2013
Really, i am a Brazilian man and i'm proud of my country and i'm used to believe the potential of Brazil to strike on the movies ( city of god is proof of this ) But honestly i just thought that macunaima was enough to make me sick. Even if it's based on a surrealist book rited by Mario De andrade, the surrealism is not impressive, funny, or gorgeous, in other words it sounds more like a madhouse. Even with the talented cast and a good acting of Grande Otelo, the direction, the photography, the production and camera settings are terrible. I really thought for a moment that someone in the set was drugged with some weird chemical, and i have no doubts that could be director of this movie.
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