Pixote
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Movie Reviews of Pixote
Movie Review: There But For the Grace of God.......
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a part of the world we live in. We have all played a part in not only creating this world, but allowing it to continue. Each and every day, with the choices we make, we either tear each other down or we build each other up. I happen to believe that we are responsible for each other. If we see a film like this and we take it to heart, then how can we be so self-indulgent and uncaring toward our fellow human beings? How can I buy an expensive car or TV or suit of clothes when there are people like this in the world? Can't I do something better with my money? When you witness these powerful and horrifying images, you get a chilling sense of what hell must be like.
Babenco, though he would probably deny it, is a true prophet. No, not in the sense of predicting the future, but in the mere act of sharing reality with us. He is telling the brutal, unvarnished truth. Many of us are uncomfortable with the truth. And so we make fun or ignore or hate those who deliver it. We would all be wise to heed these prophets.
These children happened to be born when and where they were, in the midst of hell. They did not choose this; who in their right mind would? I happened to be born in relative comfort and ease, in upper-middle class America. I have always had huge advantages over most of the people on this earth, simply because I have never been hungry. Do I think that God does not expect much of me because of this disparity? I would be a fool to think so. Therefore, I need to do what I can to make this world more equal. Why should I have everything I would ever need, and most people on earth not even have enough to eat? There is something dreadfully wrong here.
As Americans we need to do everything we can to help those who have so little in this world. In a way, we should thank God for these poor unfortunates because they have a way of helping us see what our priorities should be. They are Jesus on the road to Calvary. Do we stop and help them? Do we carry the cross? Do we wipe the brow, and give water to drink? If we do not, we reject God. And then God, in the fulness of time, will allow us to exist without him.
Movie Review: Those Eyes
Summary: 5 Stars
Before diving into the meat of this emotionally disturbing drama, I must ask whether or not the same results could have been achieved by opting for less graphic depictions of the material presented. Remember, this movie is about the life of a ten year old street kid named Pixote (pronounced pee-SHOT) seeing through the eyes of a ten year old street kid, and I don't think the events depicted here could be expressed any more clearly in any other way. How are we to know how shocking his life is unless we are shocked by what he has to live through?
I finished watching this movie without thinking too much about it. The story itself kind of drags from time to time, but I found myself still thinking about it almost a week later. I keep thinking about Pixote's eyes. They are so disturbed yet calm, deep yet shallow, inquisitive yet all-knowing. When I look into those eyes, I see the soul of a child who is greatly disturbed because of sights that are not meant for a ten year old. No actor can portray that. We can only achieve that aura from a child who actually has seen some of the horrors that were depicted in the movie.
We follow the life of Pixote as he is first moved into a reformatory school for boys, and we follow his life as the core group of friends he becomes involved with start getting killed one-by-one as the adults who run the facilities try to save some face. Thinking he is going to be next on the list of hits, and seeing the corruption invovled in running the facility first hand, he does what he has to do in order to survive. So is the life of a child who has grown up all to fast. Then, just as we are coming to accept the fact that the ten year old Pixote has developed the personality and coping mechanisms of an adult, the movie reminds us in a heavy and startling way that young Pixote is still just a child.
This is definitely not a movie for a child to be watching. Such a statement really makes one think about the fact that we don't want our kids watching a movie about the kind of life that young Pixote was forced to live.
Movie Review: A bitter and unforgettable nightmare !
Summary: 5 Stars
This cult movie meant the major achievement of his master brazilian director Hector Babienco .
Inspired in the deepest roots of this ancient artistic movement the italian neo realism (in honor the first sample of this artistic category was born with a Jean Renour film of 1934 : Tony), Babenco camera literally is a merciless eye which scrutinizes every little detail and the unboreable atmosphere of the painful childhood in the streets of Brazil . In this case Fernando Ramos Da Silva (Pixote) made a glamorous debut as actor , where he becomes in adult without having lived his deserved childhood dreams and normal illusions of this age .
The cruelty will be its fellow partner ; so the world of the crime , prostitution , drugs and crookness will be the eternal friends in his miserable existence .
Fernado Ramos could never abandon such life level and years later he died victim of several shots in one of these countless favelas (this is the brazilian therm which designs the poorest neighborhood on the hills of the city).
The four most remarkable films which I remind closer to this in which its powerful and merciless social realism concerns are Salaam Bombay of Mira Nair 1989 ; Brutti , sporchi e cattivi a little gem of 1976 directed by Ettore Scola ; the other one is Mamma Roma of Pier Paolo Pasolini of the early sixties and that unforgettable film of Roberto Roselini Germania Anno Zero of the middle forties.
This film won the prize as Best Foreign Film of the L.A. Films Citics Association and the New York Film Critics of 1981 .
Babenco was the lone star of the brazilian filmography in the eighties . He would be the director of that painful Ironweed with Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson.
Movie Review: Must see.....
Summary: 5 Stars
Hector Babenco's tale of homeless children in Brazil is devastating. Must rank with some of the great films ever.
The film stars 10-year old Fernando Ramos da Silva, who was an illiterate kid plucked from the streets of Sao Paulo. At the beginning of the film, a judge has been murdered and kids are rounded up and sent to a reformatory. Pixote witnesses a brutal rape his first night. He quickly adapts to the chaotic and often inhumane atmosphere. Corrupt police pin the crime on one of Pixote's friends and brutally murder him. They pin his murder on a second friend, and proceed to kill him.
Pixote and friends escape to the streets of Sao Paulo where they resume their life of crime. The friends are Lillica, a transvestite soon to turn 18, Dito, Lillica's lover and ring-leader, and Chico. The friends meet Cristal, a drug dealer who sends them to Rio to sell cocaine. A drug deal gone awry costs Chico his life and Pixote kills the perpetrator, a prostitute named Debora. The three boys hook up with another prostitute named Sueli, played by Marilia Pera in an unforgettable performance.
There is a sadness in Pixote's eyes that is unforgettable. He accepts his descent into hell in a matter-of-fact manner. Viewers will have difficulty deciding whether he sympathetic or not. He is only ten, has a baby face, and faces horrible circumstances. At the same time, he is an eager participant in the crimes that take place. The portrayal of what Brazil's awful conditions do to the young and innocent is heartbreaking.
Movie Review: Pixote (CD)
Summary: 5 Stars
Ten-year-old Pixote (Portuguese slang word for, "PeeWee")is one of the millions of homeless children in Brazil. He is arrested in a typical police round-up and placed in their vesion of the United States Junenvile detention centers. although them film is about the kids down in Brazil, some 20 years ago.... You would be surprised to know,... that the US system is not much better, today, than what is portrayed in this movie! The kids in the US judical and foster care systems are treated pretty much the same way as these kids are treated 20 years ago in a third world country! Some people may look at this film and say, " Oh those poor kids down there in Brazil....", but what they don't know is that nothing has changed down there and it is much the same with the kids here... in America!!!