Glória Pires, Rui Ricardo Diaz (as the adult Lula)
LULA, THE SON OF BRAZIL: Brazil’s Controversial Oscar 2011 Submission – Part I
“I’ve never seen anything unanimous in my life," producer Iafa Britz, whose Nosso Lar / Our Home has become a national blockbuster, was quoted as saying in Veja. "I can’t think of a single example of unanimity. But I prefer to keep quiet and accept [the decision]."
Anna Muylaert, whose Smoke Gets in Your Eyes was also in the running, remarked that the committee may have chosen Lula, the Son of Brazil because of the Academy’s penchant for shortlisting historical dramas.
"If that characteristic is taken into account, The Son of Brazil fulfills the requirement," Muylaert explains. "But there are other [requirements] necessary to give a film a chance: quality and box-office muscle, for instance. And Lula lacks both quality and popular appeal."
Painting the film selection committee and Barreto’s flick in the colors of the Brazilian flag, veteran filmmaker and Brazilian Film Academy president Roberto Farias claimed the committee "took Brazil into account. [For Lula, the Son of Brazil] reflects a little about our lives. Lula is a star here and abroad; he’s well known internationally."
Farias also explained that "We chose the film that seemed to us the most accomplished, one that honors Brazilian filmmaking and that stars [veteran actress] Glória Pires, who becomes an excellent choice for the Best Actress award [for her performance as Lula’s mother]. Our choice had nothing to do with politics."
Now, which Brazil Farias was taking into account no one knows, for the vast majority of Brazilians hardly go from poor, illiterate migrants to presidents.
Not to mention the fact that about 130,000 Brazilians visited the Ministry of Culture’s website to vote for their Oscar submission choice — Lula, the Son of Brazil received a mere 1% of the vote, coming in sixth place. The Brazilian public’s top choice was Wagner de Assis‘ Our Home, about spiritualism and life after death, with 70% of the vote, followed by Daniel Filho’s Chico Xavier, a biopic of spiritualist medium and author Francisco Candido Xavier ("Chico" is the Portuguese nickname for Francisco), with 12%.
As for Glória Pires‘ Oscar chances — in case Lula were to open in Los Angeles in 2010, that is … Well, regardless of the quality of Pires’ performance, I’d say that even Drew Barrymore in Going the Distance and Jennifer Aniston in The Switch have a better chance.
Lula, the Son of Brazil is expected to open in the US in winter 2011. Its final moments will be changed for international audiences, who’ll be able to catch the Brazilian president buddying it up with the likes of Barack Obama and Queen Elizabeth II — but not, I can guarantee you, with Iran’s leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
For the record, the official film selection committee members were handpicked by Brazil’s Ministry of Culture, and, for the first time, by the National Cinema Agency and the Brazilian Film Academy.
They were: the aforementioned Roberto Farias, in addition to Cássio Henrique Starling Carlos, Clélia Bessa, Elisa Tolomelli, Frederico Hermann Barbosa Maia, Jean Claude Bernardet, Leon Kakoff, Márcia Lellis de Souza Amaral and Mariza Leão Salles de Rezende.
Note: Our Home, which opened in Sept. 2010, cost US$11.6m, and is now officially the most expensive Brazilian film production ever. How they can figure those things out I don’t know, as Brazil has had a whole array of currencies in the last few decades.
Photo: Luiz Carlos Barreto Produções Cinematográficas
Lula sucks. This is the most corrupted man in the brazzilian’s republic history as a president.
Al they, from PT are comunists, and a lot of them, was terrorists, robers, murderers, and criminals, including Mrs Roussef. This fiml is shit. Look and say something. It was made with our money and to be a propaganda piece for the elections. Nothing more than shit.
For those of you who come from the Northeast, lived in favellas and struggled to succeed, this film is less about Lula than it is about the struggles of Brazilians. Paolista’s are famous for getting it wrong. This film and the acting is merely a masterpiece. Whether the subject matter is Lula or not, the depiction of the poor struggling farmer, forced economic migration, the struggle between the farm and the city, the rich and the poor: well, this is the history of Brazil. Further more, the acting is superb and the soundtrack immortalizes the era of the hate-filled dictatorship which you hardly mention in your review. Suspicious then, because I have a theory about Brazilians who benefited from the amnesty for their atrocities against humanity.