B+Directed by Petra Costa Review by Jon Kissel |  |
Documentaries don’t tend to give me nightmares, though I’ll add the caveat that I’ve never seen the one about sleep paralysis that’s supposedly the most terrifying film of the 21st century. Petra Costa’s The Edge of Democracy lingered in my subconscious for a long time, to the point where I was having stress dreams about vicious mobs of burly men in yellow and green. Costa blends her own familial background with a propulsive story of 21st century Brazilian politics, spinning a yarn that considers centuries of history against recent events. It’s a story of collapse and retrenchment, of political icons tarnished and humiliated by their repulsive enemies, of the elevation of those who have a diametrically oppositional worldview to basic humanity. Thankfully, Americans have no way to relate to anything depicted here.
Costa’s preferred shot, when she’s not using you-are-there footage from parliamentary debates and street protests, is a sweeping pan over the National Congress building in Brasilia, a stark white edifice rising out of a grassy field. A relatively new structure, Costa describes it as a gleaming symbol of the future that is nevertheless built on a colonial state’s stolen ground, a place whose wealth comes from slave plantations and is maintained in brutal repressions. Like so many colonial nations, folding the colonized into government alongside the colonizers is a difficult process and one that the latter often doesn’t want in the first place, thus leading to the country’s long history of apartheid states, dictatorships, and military juntas. Costa’s hypothesis, stated in the first few scenes in her heartfelt narration, is a question of if Brazil’s democracy, around since 1985, is here to stay or is merely a blip in the country’s long story of repression and autocracy. Are the rising conservative forces in her country interested in liberal democracy at all, or are they consolidators and inheritors of their colonial ancestors’ legacy?
No impassive historian or journalist, Costa makes emphatic use of her own family’s history and considerable connections to make her case that her side is on the side of the angels. Her parents were corporate scions who became class traitors and leftist activists during the pre-democratic military rule, and both spent time in jail and in hiding. Many of their comrades weren’t as fortunate, suffering torture and death at the hands of the government. One of the tortured is Dilma Rousseff, a striking figure who’s given an intro like she’s in the Copa scene of Goodfellas. Rousseff describes the key to getting through a torture session as a series of mental hills. Just hold out for one more minute, and then one more after that, and so on. That she becomes the duly elected president of a country that probably still contains people that tortured her is an incredible story, and the adulation of Costa’s camera makes it apparent that she’d much rather be making a film about Rousseff’s triumphant and inspiring life.
Instead, The Edge of Democracy gives a brisk summary of 21st century Brazilian politics, starting with the presidency of the iconic working-class hero Lula and culminating in the shady election of the repulsive Jair Bolsonaro. In the middle, Rousseff was impeached and removed from office for having the bad luck to be president in a contracting economy, spurred on by a rival who undercut her legitimacy at every turn. Lula could conceivably have run again against Bolsonaro, but he was thrown in jail after a long investigation that has since been exposed as corrupt to its core. Costa’s reverence for Rousseff is tempered by the acknowledgement of her errors along the way, including an inability by her and by Lula to address the rampant corruption in the state-owned oil company Petrobras that contributes to both of their downfalls. The film could not be called an impartial deconstruction, but the refusal by Costa to insist that her political heroes did everything right improves her film. Her disappointment that Lula and Rousseff weren’t able to anticipate how their enemies would ensnare them gives the film’s second hour a heavy air of impending doom.
The doom arrives with Bolsonaro, withheld until the film’s final tailspin and then bursting on the screen as a torture apologist and national embarrassment. There’s no better incarnation of the yellow and green mob’s collective id than him, a proud know-nothing who prizes physical strength and domination above all else. It won’t be Bolsonaro who clips on the jumper cables if he makes his wildest dreams come true, but one of these screaming maniacs who’ll gleefully enact their power fantasies on their fellow citizens. Costa is present for their rallies and other pivotal moments of this period, finding herself in Lula’s car as he willingly reports to jail. To the end, she laments that he and Rousseff are being defeated and sidelined, but objectivity is impossible with Bolsonaro in one corner. The Edge of Democracy is film as historical document, a primer for the uninformed and a future resource for whoever tells the whole story of this era in Brazil, provided such a telling is permitted at that time. B+
No impassive historian or journalist, Costa makes emphatic use of her own family’s history and considerable connections to make her case that her side is on the side of the angels. Her parents were corporate scions who became class traitors and leftist activists during the pre-democratic military rule, and both spent time in jail and in hiding. Many of their comrades weren’t as fortunate, suffering torture and death at the hands of the government. One of the tortured is Dilma Rousseff, a striking figure who’s given an intro like she’s in the Copa scene of Goodfellas. Rousseff describes the key to getting through a torture session as a series of mental hills. Just hold out for one more minute, and then one more after that, and so on. That she becomes the duly elected president of a country that probably still contains people that tortured her is an incredible story, and the adulation of Costa’s camera makes it apparent that she’d much rather be making a film about Rousseff’s triumphant and inspiring life.
Instead, The Edge of Democracy gives a brisk summary of 21st century Brazilian politics, starting with the presidency of the iconic working-class hero Lula and culminating in the shady election of the repulsive Jair Bolsonaro. In the middle, Rousseff was impeached and removed from office for having the bad luck to be president in a contracting economy, spurred on by a rival who undercut her legitimacy at every turn. Lula could conceivably have run again against Bolsonaro, but he was thrown in jail after a long investigation that has since been exposed as corrupt to its core. Costa’s reverence for Rousseff is tempered by the acknowledgement of her errors along the way, including an inability by her and by Lula to address the rampant corruption in the state-owned oil company Petrobras that contributes to both of their downfalls. The film could not be called an impartial deconstruction, but the refusal by Costa to insist that her political heroes did everything right improves her film. Her disappointment that Lula and Rousseff weren’t able to anticipate how their enemies would ensnare them gives the film’s second hour a heavy air of impending doom.
The doom arrives with Bolsonaro, withheld until the film’s final tailspin and then bursting on the screen as a torture apologist and national embarrassment. There’s no better incarnation of the yellow and green mob’s collective id than him, a proud know-nothing who prizes physical strength and domination above all else. It won’t be Bolsonaro who clips on the jumper cables if he makes his wildest dreams come true, but one of these screaming maniacs who’ll gleefully enact their power fantasies on their fellow citizens. Costa is present for their rallies and other pivotal moments of this period, finding herself in Lula’s car as he willingly reports to jail. To the end, she laments that he and Rousseff are being defeated and sidelined, but objectivity is impossible with Bolsonaro in one corner. The Edge of Democracy is film as historical document, a primer for the uninformed and a future resource for whoever tells the whole story of this era in Brazil, provided such a telling is permitted at that time. B+
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