Review
BUS 174
Starring Sandro de Nascimento
Directed by José Padilha
Opens Friday, November 28
Plaza Theatre
On June 12, 2000, Sandro de Nascimento stepped onto a bus in Rio de Jeneiro, brandishing a handgun and demanded money from its occupants. It was just another day in Rio.
That is until an unnecessarily prompt response time by police turned the simple robbery into a complex hostage situation destined to be botched through incompetence. Toss in virtually unrestricted media coverage throughout the five-hour ordeal and what followed was a sequence of dramatized misfortunes to rival the wet dreams of any reality-TV producer.
Bus 174 is a documentary by José Padilha focusing on the hows and whys of the avoidable tragedy that was this day-long fiasco. Relying heavily on in-your-face news footage (that was broadcast live to Brazilians), as well as in-depth interviews with hostages, police officers and friends and family of de Nascimento, Padilha intercuts the events of June 12 with the story of de Nascimento’s life as a doomed street kid shunned by society. In so doing, Padilha addresses that age-old ideological argument of nurture versus nature. Did de Nascimento instigate the events leading to this tragedy of police incompetence simply because it was bred into him, or might there be more to the story?
Had he believed the former, Padilha would have had a much shorter film on his hands. Fortunately for us though, he chose to paint the scenario, not in black and white, but in a muddled grey.
And so we are told the story of a child who, after witnessing the brutal murder of his mother at the age of five, was destined for a life on the streets where crime is simply a means of survival. We are told of the socio-economic problems in Brazil, where its class system has divided the nation to a point where rich ignore the poor. We are told of a government whose brutal attitude towards street kids helped instigate the Candelaria massacres (where Sandro again got to witness the slaying of the people he called family). And we are told of a penal system so inhumane and violent that people would rather die than go to jail. We are told that violence begets violence.
As manipulative and subjective as some documentary filmmaking can be, it’s often easy for critics to discredit a film like this as being socialist propaganda (just ask Michael Moore). But it’s to Padilha’s credit that he is able to avoid this by simply presenting us with the information he has acquired. We are not force-fed opinions and told what to believe, nor is de Nascimento portrayed as some sort of martyr for equal rights –we are simply given the full story and are then left to draw our own conclusions. |
Copyright ©2003 FFWD. All rights reserved.