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Carandiru review
:. Director: Hector Babenco
:. Starring: Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos, Milton Gonçalves
:. Running Time: 2:26
:. Year: 2003
:. Country: Brazil
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The adaptation of Carandiru Station, a best-seller by Drauzio Varella, Carandiru proposes diving into the heart of São Paulo's prison, the largest in Latin America with approximately 7,000 prisoners with a capacity for 4,500. Guided by a humanist doctor (the author) who has an affection for the prisoners, the audience shares in the daily life of the condemned before the massacre perpetrated on October 2, 1992 by the police force following a riot.
The film opens with a settling of scores by Ebony, a prisoner in charge of the kitchens. While the director quickly arrives on the spot, Ebony doesn't let go of the reins of the situation. He's understood: in Carandiru, the voices of management and prisoners rise in a choir and vibrate in diapason, in order to maintain a balance and precarious order, essential for the place to function well. The armed sentinels carrying out their rounds along the ramparts, always discrete, only represent only the last resort in case of outbursts.
What's immediately striking about Babenco's film is the details used to account for the tacit rules laid down in this place of imprisonment. Killers, robbers and rapists seem to cohabit by enacting their own rules, often transpositions of the law of the street, with its codes, duties, rights and punishments.
Between the walls of the various wards, one witnesses the everyday life of a city totally apart, with its neighborhoods, trades, residences. No cell is closed: the impression is visiting studios of disconcerting filth in bad neighborhoods. Each one comes and goes as he pleases, adapting and decorates his cell to fit his taste. One watches TV, another cooks, while one hangs his laundry on the bars. Difficult to be convinced that it's about a prison. The colors and lighting serve this hyper-realist atmosphere. Inspired by the lighting of the prison, Walter Carvalho, director of photography, mixes the colors, making hot and cold lights cohabit. The result: a chromatic chaos contrary to the dark and dull images one usually has of this type of place. However, bad luck and filth live on the walls.
The characters drag bad luck like a ball and chain. It's unfortunate that Babenco didn't know to draw up their portraits intelligibly. He doesn't manage avoiding the tedious enumeration of their personal stories. During the procession of the prisoners in the infirmary where the doctor quickly gains their confidence, the audience is entitled to flashbacks on each one. As necessary as these biographies are in order to be attached to the protagonists, Babenco toils to connect everything.
On the other hand he manages to awake the audience's empathy through a distanced humor, as in the scene where a volunteer helps the doctor to inject the patients, all while smoking crack. In order to justify himself he claims that the veins appear to him more clearly, like in Las Vegas! Nobody is fooled: all can protest the miscarriage of justice and their innocence; they live as criminals and must remain so to survive in prison. The emphasis put on their joie de vivre however makes them a part of humanity. Seeing their daily life evolve, especially during long festive sequences where the most successful is family visit day, a joyous fete punctuated by comical situations referring to the stories of each character. A central pivot, the doctor, a true innocent confidant without prejudices, passes them the mike. At the end of the film, as in a documentary, the survivors address the camera, testifying and commenting on the events. Each one delivers his hypotheses on the reasons for the mutiny. An unpaid debt? A soccer game? Briefs?
The end of the film, centered on the massacre, sometimes skids towards complaisance, with backlit bodies set in the position of Christ crucified, a cascade of blood descending the staircases, or the shots of the naked bodies of the humiliated survivors, packed one against the other in the hall. However, this long half hour, divided into several stages (scuffle between prisoners, the ransack of the prison, negotiations with the authorities, massacres, humiliation), seals Babenco's somewhat committed discourse with relevance. The question about the truth thus finds its legitimacy. The official report establishes 111 dead prisoners and with no police fatalities. The only ones present during the drama: God, the police force, prisoners. The prisoners speak, but as one of them says so well: "The prison is not the residence of the truth".
Moland Fengkov
Translated into English by Anji Milanovic
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