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Pixote, 1981
A boy named Pixote (Fernando Ramas da Silva) is arrested in a general round up of children living in the streets. Taken to an institution that is somewhere between a jail and a childrens' home, Pixote immediately encounters the brutal realities of abuse, assault, and neglect--things perpetrated by both his fellow inmates and the adults running the place. When Pixote and some other boys make a run for it, their lives only become more complicated.
Brutal, brutal, brutal. There is just no other way to describe this film. The real miracle of it is that despite basically consisting of two full hours of horrifying images and sequences, the film never films exploitative--always staying rooted in a degree of sympathy for its characters.
The film has an incredible knack for communicating with terrifying efficiency just how hellish the situation is for the boys in the institution. On Pixote's first night, he witnesses the horrific rape of one of the boys by some older teenagers. When the main supervisor finds the boy dead(?) the next morning, he admonishes the boys that their actions make him look bad. The boys are never treated as human. They are regarded by their caretakers as inconveniences, and their brutalized, unconscious bodies are frequently lugged around by staff as if they were bags of trash.
Another aspect of the film that is very moving and well-realized is the nature of the relationships between the different boys. These relationships are both tenuous and essential for survival. Pixote eventually mainly falls in with an inmate named Lilica (Jorge Juliao) who seems to be a transwoman; a teenage boy named Dito (Gilberto Moura), and a boy named Chico (Edilson Lino). While the boys band together out of necessity, they are just as capable of doing harm to each other, and their desperation often puts them in precarious positions. I found Lilica's character especially interesting---her femininity at once an advantage and a vulnerability.
This is the kind of film that really forces me to wrestle with my sense of morality/ethics when it comes to what is put on screen using actual child actors. There is a lot of nudity in this film that involves children who look to be as young as 11-13 years old, some of it including sexual situations or sexual violence. The choice to put the bodies of these boys on display is clearly a choice intended to drive home the dehumanizing conditions in which they live. A sequence where a frustrated caretaker throws the nude body of a boy over his shoulder hits much harder than if the boy were clothed. At the same time, the use of children in such scenes always gives me pause. Does a 13 or 14 year old child really have the emotional and mental development to make the choice to put their body on display in such a way? To grant the permission for the perpetual existence of images of their childhood bodies? Again, I never felt that the use of the children was meant to be exploitative, but several scenes gave me pause.
I would also be remiss in not mentioning the fate of the actor who played Pixote. Six years after playing this lead role, he was shot dead by the police. The writer/director of the film, Hector Babenco, deliberately cast many boys who had been in similar situations as their characters. The death of da Silva (who, from what I read, was possibly shot in the back while laying on the ground, unarmed) is a bleak, heart-breaking "post-film" coda to the whole affair. Within the film you see the systemic failure of a society to protect and nurture its vulnerable children. Da Silva's death eerily echoes this failure in real life.
This movie made me think a lot of Come and See. Tragedy upon tragedy, and yet you can't look away.
Pixote, 1981
A boy named Pixote (Fernando Ramas da Silva) is arrested in a general round up of children living in the streets. Taken to an institution that is somewhere between a jail and a childrens' home, Pixote immediately encounters the brutal realities of abuse, assault, and neglect--things perpetrated by both his fellow inmates and the adults running the place. When Pixote and some other boys make a run for it, their lives only become more complicated.
Brutal, brutal, brutal. There is just no other way to describe this film. The real miracle of it is that despite basically consisting of two full hours of horrifying images and sequences, the film never films exploitative--always staying rooted in a degree of sympathy for its characters.
The film has an incredible knack for communicating with terrifying efficiency just how hellish the situation is for the boys in the institution. On Pixote's first night, he witnesses the horrific rape of one of the boys by some older teenagers. When the main supervisor finds the boy dead(?) the next morning, he admonishes the boys that their actions make him look bad. The boys are never treated as human. They are regarded by their caretakers as inconveniences, and their brutalized, unconscious bodies are frequently lugged around by staff as if they were bags of trash.
Another aspect of the film that is very moving and well-realized is the nature of the relationships between the different boys. These relationships are both tenuous and essential for survival. Pixote eventually mainly falls in with an inmate named Lilica (Jorge Juliao) who seems to be a transwoman; a teenage boy named Dito (Gilberto Moura), and a boy named Chico (Edilson Lino). While the boys band together out of necessity, they are just as capable of doing harm to each other, and their desperation often puts them in precarious positions. I found Lilica's character especially interesting---her femininity at once an advantage and a vulnerability.
This is the kind of film that really forces me to wrestle with my sense of morality/ethics when it comes to what is put on screen using actual child actors. There is a lot of nudity in this film that involves children who look to be as young as 11-13 years old, some of it including sexual situations or sexual violence. The choice to put the bodies of these boys on display is clearly a choice intended to drive home the dehumanizing conditions in which they live. A sequence where a frustrated caretaker throws the nude body of a boy over his shoulder hits much harder than if the boy were clothed. At the same time, the use of children in such scenes always gives me pause. Does a 13 or 14 year old child really have the emotional and mental development to make the choice to put their body on display in such a way? To grant the permission for the perpetual existence of images of their childhood bodies? Again, I never felt that the use of the children was meant to be exploitative, but several scenes gave me pause.
I would also be remiss in not mentioning the fate of the actor who played Pixote. Six years after playing this lead role, he was shot dead by the police. The writer/director of the film, Hector Babenco, deliberately cast many boys who had been in similar situations as their characters. The death of da Silva (who, from what I read, was possibly shot in the back while laying on the ground, unarmed) is a bleak, heart-breaking "post-film" coda to the whole affair. Within the film you see the systemic failure of a society to protect and nurture its vulnerable children. Da Silva's death eerily echoes this failure in real life.
This movie made me think a lot of Come and See. Tragedy upon tragedy, and yet you can't look away.