My Take on Ganga Bruta

What a delight. This film was like a poetic breeze taking us through regret, heart brake and the joy and horror of a new found love. The film bravely kept its own pace and never rushed to follow the plot or give us unnecessary details about the lead characters. It was spare and didn't say more than it wanted to and knew best when to move on. It was interesting to see Brazil in base of modernization and as well as the decay the construction of new buildings caused. Regarding some of the things said in the class discussion, I do believe some regret and remorse was shown by Allende, but I think the film romanticized his self-imposed tragedy. It would have been more interesting to see the filmmakers take a hands-off approach and let the character speak for himself. I must say thoug, I was entranced by the sequence where his odd looking friend sings that beautiful song while Allende reminisces and stews in his past. Also interesting was his drinking problem and how it inflated his sense of power and duty. I also admired the acting. Seeing as it was mostly a silent film, I was impressed at how, for the most part, the acting was restrained and playful and not over the top where it shouldn't have been, compared to most of the silent films I have seen, (which, admittedly, are fewer than I would like), which choose to emphasize each singular emotions through their actors rather than synthesizing those emotions into an interesting composition of what a human is. With that said, I was mostly pleased with what I saw, despite its flaws of overly romanticizing its lead and turning its female characters into 1-D harlots and floozies.