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Overlooked & Underrated Docs & Features
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Lula: Son of Brazil
Have you heard of Lula? I certainly hadn't – until now. When I received the promotional inquiry seeking my interest as a reviewer I was unsure at first if this was a narrative film or a documentary about some famous guy from Brazil. Although it appeared to be a narrative I made a rare exception to my habit of reviewing only documentaries and requested the screener from New Yorker Films. I placed the DVD in my player without reading the case's printed information – another habit.
I learned that Lula – Luis Inácio Lula da Silva – is about as famous as you can get. The last image of the film is of the historical Lula pictured with what appears to be Bill Gates and Bono. The concluding text of the film refers to Lula's multi-term presidency of Brazil as well as his international renown.
Director Fábio Barreto's "Lula: Sun of Brazil" kept this uninitiated viewer in the dark the whole time – up until the very end with the aforementioned text along with several pictures of the real man portrayed by Rui Ricardo Diaz. The film follows Lula's rise to prominence as a union leader who had garnered national fame. The story ends – again, mysteriously to me, the uninformed – with Lula still in the custody of government officials. And then there's that revealing text.
The story we do see follows Lula as a very young boy living with his mother and many siblings in rural poverty. The father, Aristides, played by Marcos Cesana, is a drunk, philandering and abusive father. Although on screen for only a few minutes, Cesana powerfully captures Aristides' anger and bewilderment at the narcissistic, impoverished, meaningless life he's living. The film follows Lula as his family escapes – if you can call it that – to urban life, through his vocational education as a machinist, his personal tragedies and triumphs, and finally his rise to national prominence as a union leader. The film deftly weaves into the film's narrative journalist coverage of the urban strife between workers and the business-run government.
As the film's concluding text and journalistic photographs appeared I was left feeling humiliated – as I frequently do when I learn information I should have known – and wondering 'How did Lula get out of custody? How did he metamorphose from a union leader to a national politician? What happened in the many elections he lost and won? What was his national leadership like? What did he accomplish in his presidency? What did he do to attract international acclaim?' Questions too big, of course, for a 2-hour movie. Barreto and company set the stage, in effect, for proffering the story of Lula's ascent. Barring that, it's up to us to learn the rest.