neumu [ cinematronic ]




	Carandiru
	Hector Babenco Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos, Milton Gonçalves, Ivan de Almeida, Ailton Graça, Maria Luisa Mendonça, Aida Leiner, Rodrigo Santoro, Rita Cadillac, Gero Camilo, Lázaro Ramos, Caio Blat, Wagner Moura, Júlia Ianina, Sabrina Greve, Floriano Peixoto 2003		Hector Babenco, the Brazilian writer/director who dazzled international audiences with the jailhouse drama "Kiss of the Spider Woman," just can't seem to stay out of prison — figuratively. His "Carandiru" is a series of cellblock vignettes seen from the point of view of a sympathetic doctor (Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos) working amid the bedlam and disgraceful circumstances of São Paulo, Brazil's sprawling, ramshackle Carandiru penitentiary. The movie is based on the experiences of a real physician who was running an AIDS prevention program in Carandiru, prior to a notorious 1992 prison uprising that ended in tragedy. Babenco's grimy, slimy, violent movie bursts with humanity and heartbreak. It casts a jaundiced eye on the prison system and puts a sympathetic face on the convicts, some of whom are locked up for one misstep and then get stuck in that world for life, or until premature death. There are so many characters, plotlines and back-stories that it's almost overwhelming. It helps that the actors in the large cast are uniformly believable. In "Carandiru," overcrowding and near-nonexistent services result in misery so severe that rehabilitation seems unlikely for most of the prisoners. But Babenco shows flashes of hope in some of the incarcerated, like rare flowers blooming in a cracked sidewalk.


	Wednesday, November 13, 2024





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