The Man Who Copied

Marcelo Janot

Ciudade de Deus, Carandiru, and Madame Satã have been regarded as examples of a new Brazilian cinema concerned with reflecting the social abyss established in its urban centers. In its own way, each of these films point towards a violent reality that seems to be far from being answered. Since they are fictions built upon true episodes, these films gain a documentary force, and are sometimes criticized because of their aesthetic options -which many times are polemic, as is the case in Cidade de Deus.

The relationship between O Homen que Copiaba and the aforementioned films may seem too distant. In the end, director Jorge Furtado uses a fable-like tone, and from and apparently absurd story, it ends up presenting the most faithful mirror of contemporary Brazilian society found in all recent films. This is something that could be expected from a filmmaker that in 1989 directed what is considered the best short film in Brazilian history: Ilha das Flores, which obtained the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, first direction that narrated the cycle of a tomato from the planting fields to the stench filled dumping grounds where human beings feed upon food thrown away as not fit even for pigs. The circular and fragmented structure of the narrative, which would create a collage with different signs, ended up as a Furtado trademark. Without any opportunity to direct a feature film during the hard years lived by Brazilian cinema during the Nineties, he lent his creativity as a television scriptwriter, revolutionizing what was, until then a conservative language used in miniseries and specials on the TV Globo network.

With an increased Brazilian film production, Furtado’s debut as a feature director was finally possible. It started with a singular adolescent film, Houve Uma Vez Dois Verões, where, with an apparent lack of pretensions, an accurate vision of a universe which was normally portrayed as a stereotype was revealed. Finally, with O Homen que Copiaba, he retakes the most defining characteristics of his inventive filmmaking.
The title is not only a reference to the photocopier operator which is the main film character, but also to the man behind it: director Jorge Furtado is the man who copies, done in an assumed and purposeful way, without any fear of being accused of plagiarism. He copies, or better yet, reprocesses a large number of artistic, literary and film influences, which encompass Shakespeare to Xavier de Maistre, from Murnau to Hitchcock and his own past films.

In an interview given to the films official website, Furtado declared that when he wrote the script, he hadn’t seen A Short Film About Love, a film by Krzysztof Kieslowski which has many similarities with O Homen que Copiaba. For him, it is impossible to invent a farce which is completely new; everything is reference to other things. The secret is in the way of joining these so diverse references, in the mixture of disparate elements in order to form a solid and cohesive product.
The excess of quotes and film formats does not deviate the focal point of the three bigger qualities present in every Furtado work: the ingeniousness of the script, the humanization of the characters, and the discussion of ethics that his films provoke. The characters, André (Lázaro Ramos), Sílvia (Leandra Leal), Marinês (Luana Piovani) and Cardoso (Pedro Cardoso) are anti-heroes who, abandoned to their luck by a social structure that denies them of any opportunity for advancement, establish their own moral code which justifies their acts. They falsify, steal and kill. But the never stop to question the legitimacy of their actions. Jorge Furtado also makes a point in not questioning them. Few characters, even among secondary ones, are not responsible for some moral crime. So, in that pessimistic vision of a society where everyone seems to be corrupt, the relativization of these crimes imposes an ethical conflict which will extend to each spectator’s own interpretation.

Furtado’s cinema has ample space for the uncommon, and that is what makes his works so special. He can start the film with almost half an hour of narration in Off, in order to alienate the audience, risking their tedium. When the film takes on a more conventional narrative, it will soon be subverted again.
Within this particular logic, and starting with an experimentalism that never yields to a communicability, like a modern fairy tale, O Homen que Copiaba touches subjects which are fundamental to the understanding of what a lower middle class young Brazilian of today is: lack of professional perspective, lack of family structure, the dictatorship of consumerism, and a revisiting of ethical concepts. The influence of the environment in the character’s destiny is determinant, but since we are talking of a film by Jorge Furtado, things will never be as simple as they seem. Destiny is always treated as a key element in his films; here, free will and religious syncretism ram head on to confuse our conclusions even more.

MARCELO JANOT is President of the Associação de Críticos de Cinema do Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilian section of FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics). Film Critic since 1992, he worked for 6 years at the Jornal do Brasil, for which he continues to publish to date. In 2002 he founded the website Críticos.com.br (www.criticos.com.br), first vitual Brazilian publication which gathered renowned critics in his editorial council, and has edited catalogs for Brazilian film festivals. He has participated as a juror in the San Sebastián, Havana, Chicago and Palm Springs Film festivals, and in March 2004 was curator for the symposium “A Arte da Crítica”, in Rio de Janeiro, which held 8 debates on each area regarding art critique and its cultural importance in Brazil.