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Thread: Manda Bala (Send A Bullet) - DFCC

  1. #1
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    Default Manda Bala (Send A Bullet) - DFCC

    I ended up renting this sort of randomly a month or two ago since I seem to have already watched all of the more immediately appealing documentaries on Netflix. I wasn't really looking forward to watching this when I got it, since I tend to try to avoid depressing entertainment, and Manda Bala is a little bit depressing. It's about Brazil, and the country's brutalities are depicted in detail. You get the impression of a country whose rulers are often very, very corrupt, and whose middle class residents are constantly at risk of abduction by gangs of professional kidnappers. The topic switches back and forth between those two topics, starting off on a frog farm whose construction was financed by millions of dollars in misdirected development funds, and then switching to discussing things like a business that sells armed luxury cars and a plastic surgeon who has developed an innovative new surgery to construct new replacement ears for kidnapping victims.

    The particular thing that I was impressed by was the clever parallel the filmmakers managed to create between the corruption perpetrated by the elites upon the underclass, and the kidnappings perpetrated by the underclass upon the elites. They film a professional kidnapper, who explicitly justifies what he does because of the way wealthy politicians have screwed over ordinary people, and who has used his ill-gotten gains in order to help out the people of his poor neighborhood.

    Anyway, I thought a lot about the movie after seeing it. Hopefully some of you guys also got around to seeing it.

  2. #2
    Oliphaunt
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    Default Re: Manda Bala (Send A Bullet) - DFCC

    Quote Originally posted by Excalibur
    Anyway, I thought a lot about the movie after seeing it. Hopefully some of you guys also got around to seeing it.

    I haven't yet, but I will soon.

  3. #3
    אני אוהב יהודים!
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    Default Re: Manda Bala (Send A Bullet) - DFCC

    I'm really glad you picked this movie although (like last week's choice) I wasn't looking forward to watching it.

    I've always wanted to visit Brazil because a friend of mine grew up there and it always seemed so beautiful and exotic to me. I'd still love to visit, but I'd honestly be a little afraid now. It's staggering to realize the amount of crime that happens on a daily basis.

    Early on in the film an image stuck with me. They showed a man driving down the street talking about how when you stop in traffic you're exposed to a carjacking, a kidnapping, a robbery... anything. He talked of having two wallets. His one for thieves and his "real" one. It really hit me how very, very lucky I am to live someplace that is really safe. Of course crime can and does happen here, but I really feel like I hit the lucky lottery being born somewhere safe.

    Ears! They cut off ears! The scene where the plastic surgeon had all the ears in the jars was a serious "WTF" moment. I.just.can't.imagine.

    Like you, I liked the two perspectives of rich taking from the poor and the poor taking from the rich. I can't imagine the feeling of hopelessness people must have dealing with it.

    Interesting film

  4. #4
    Elephant Myglaren's avatar
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    Default Re: Manda Bala (Send A Bullet) - DFCC

    Had a couple of attempts to download but no luck yet. From the trailers I watched it looks a lot better than I had anticipated.
    Will have another try tonight.
    Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill

  5. #5
    אני אוהב יהודים!
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    Default Re: Manda Bala (Send A Bullet) - DFCC

    Has no one else watched this? It was really interesting.

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    A Football of Fate Jeff's avatar
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    Default Re: Manda Bala (Send A Bullet) - DFCC

    I'm watching it right now and I'm hating the format. The interpreter of the kidnapped lady is getting more screen-time than the lady herself. I don't look forward to more of this.

    eta It's also strange that they only do that for some people. The chief investigator of the Sudam scandal speaks Portugeuse but doesn't have to share the screen - same with the anti-kidnapping squad.

  7. #7
    A Football of Fate Jeff's avatar
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    Default Re: Manda Bala (Send A Bullet) - DFCC

    I typed this out a few days ago while I was watching but forgot to post it.

    A couple of things I disliked about this film:

    The interviews - the interviewees for the most part don't even get to be talking heads. Most of the time they side their looking blankly at the camera. padding the runtime of a documentary that feels very breezy to begin with is not good. Before I started watching I was worried this film would be dubbed, it turns out that there's a worse option than that. EDIT: It probably sounds snarky when I say it that way, but it truly feels like these people are being deprived of their voice by doing this. It does bother me.

    Focus: I'm at the half-way point of the film as I'm writing this. I thought it was a documentary about kidnappings and crime in brazil. It was setup this way, and yet I've watched 35 minutes worth of talk about Jader Barbalho and political corruption. I don't know where this is going and I don't like it; I expect suspense from a crime flick, not a documentary. Either the filmakers literally don't know what they're getting at or they setting things up to fuck with me. Either way I don't like it.

    Naturally, there was an interview with a kidnapper about 5 minutes later, but it still seems like a lot of build-up towards nothing. They've been talking about the same things all film; corruption, crime, fear. It's a transfer of basic information that they're trying to tart up with little dramatic stylings into a edgy documentary.

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