The Criterion Channel Presents: Black God, White Devil (1964)

To meet this anticipation, MGM,Though it is set against a grounded socio-economic background and real history, Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil plays out like a mythic parable -or rather two mythic parables told back to back. Part of this may only resonate to those outside of Brazil -it presents an image of the country not often seen in the west, so used to it either being represented by its dense metropolises, coasts, and Amazonian jungles. But this film is set entirely in the arid hinterland environments of the Bahia region, experiencing a major drought during the 1940s. There is misery and desperation to this place, and lawlessness -it is the wild west (though more in the east of the country), which Rocha acknowledges in the manner of his presentation, but also as a form of commentary on the tenuous state of the nation at that time (and indeed the time that he made the film in -it came out mere months after the military coup that would dominate the country for twenty-one years took hold).

Black God, White Devil is a tale of despair and vengeance, how they are exploited and what comes of them, as outlined by a poor ranch hand’s doleful experiences with the two titular figures. Manoel (Geraldo Del Rey), dissatisfied with his meagre station in life, snaps one day when his boss tries to cheat him out of his earnings and kills him, fleeing with his wife Rosa (Yoná Magalhães) to the holy mountain Monte Santo, where he becomes a devout follower of a Messianic cultist called Saint Sebastião (Lidio Silva), who preaches an apocalyptic form of Christianity designed around establishing a country in the ocean while Brazil burns. Later, Manoel and Rosa will join up with a small bandit gang with revolutionary political ambitions led by the vicious Corisco (Othon Bastos). Simultaneous to these stories is that of the bounty hunter Antonio das Mortes (Maurício do Valle), recruited to kill both ideologues.

Rocha liked this character so much he gave him a spin-off film a few years later. It makes sense, he is essentially Leone’s Man With No Name in terms of his formidable, sometimes amoral personality and even his costume, but he is intellectually compelling as well -somebody who is not wholly convinced in the binary morality of either of his targets. In fact he is modestly open to Sebastião’s perspective and teachings until he is paid extremely handsomely to kill him -something he doesn’t ever get to do. But as for these figures, Rocha -as in any folk story- allows them to be extremes whom we are meant to judge through the surrogates of Manoel and Rosa. Both of these men are products of the desperate state of their world. Indeed their philosophies and war on the establishment could be an indictment of that world, that things have gone so bad in this part of Brazil to produce them.

Sebastião, who feels like a mix of Jim Jones and John Brown with a Jesus complex -and who is incidentally introduced via a conscious evocation of the Sermon on the Mount- is particularly fascinating as an avatar for the power of appropriated Catholic rhetoric, able to convince a whole commune of people that he must ‘cleanse the sinners with the blood of the innocent.’ Through identifiable language and sentiments around God and sin and exercises of penance like forcing Manoel to walk a road carrying a heavy rock over his head, he styles himself well as a pious figure, not all that different from many venerated Catholic saints. But his coldness in the face of violence and in performing violence is chilling, which Rosa picks up on while Manoel sinks too deep into fanaticism, until a horrible unspeakable act sobers him (shot by Rocha with a harrowing slow-build and disturbingly graphic insinuation).

But that devotion, built on desperation, is transferrable. And while, Manoel is nowhere as loyal to Corisco as he was to Sebastião, he still comes quickly to depend on this wannabe revolutionary. Corisco is violent too, along with his partner Dadá (Sonia Dos Humildes), but doesn't mask it. Yet he preaches about as much, screeds and stories of social inequity and systemic failure -tangible things. There is no illusion he has any power or will to change anything substantively though, his gang's acts of (sometimes quite horrible) violence merely a lashing out of an encompassing deep rage he has seemingly no ability to quell. He is positioned by the end as a tyrant in his own right -if perhaps self-aware- and the ideological opponent of Antonio by the time of their confrontation. And Manoel and Rosa, the latter especially are made witnesses to more madness.

Rocha illustrates the movie with a palpable harshness, of both its uncompromising spaces and moral fibre. A sense of unyielding heat radiates off the screen and the sweat-stained faces we often see in close-up, direct to camera from Corisco especially when delivering his polemics. The editing is fragmented in places, characterized by awkward cuts especially in beats of violence, but this has the effect of rendering the acts more jarring and the movie's reality less grounded than Rocha's naturalism would suggest. It is effective in this sense as a primal myth without a stated resolution or thematic catharsis. But it's messaging on religion, ideology, and the rhetorical power of radicals leaves an impression, keenly felt across more than a half-century.

Criterion Recommendation: Raise the Red Lantern (1991)

I did not realize until looking it up that Raise the Red Lantern, Zhang Yimou's masterful 1991 film about feminine repression in 1920s China was not actually in the Criterion Collection. It's one of those movies that feels like it naturally belongs there. Starring Gong Li in her international breakthrough role, it is the story of the fourth wife to a wealthy man, owner of an ornate estate, and the complex relationships she forms primarily with the other wives, each vying to be the favourite -something quantified by the raising of red lanterns over the individual rooms of the selected lady. While the movie engages in the drama of the situation, the conflict between the women and our protagonist's efforts to come out on top and how it effects her character, it is also a pointed comment on the limited agency for women in China at that time, the psychological impacts of generations of patriarchy (the husband is an enigma, never glimpsed in full). It is a fascinating theme from a filmmaker who has since become fairly reliably jingoistic. A beautiful movie as well, the red of the lanterns enveloping the environment in a vivid and captivating sheen, while the labyrinth of the estate is drawn with an ominous imposing mood. A searing, unforgettable film.

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