"BOPE: Tropa De Elite" or "BOPE: Elite Troop" it's about a SWAT-style
police unit in Rio that fights drug traffickers using summary
executions and Abu Ghraib-style torture. If this film launched in
America it would be your basic late 70s / early 80s
clean-up-the-streets-with-more-than-a-touch-of-fascism police drama.
Here it is blowing everybody's mind. It also leaked a month before
the release to the vast network of pirate DVD sellers, and then broke
records in its opening weekend.
I just watched a long interview of the director on national TV
(something that people crowded around the TV for) and it made me want
to write something about the film and the phenomenon, so I'm writing
some notes here that I might use.
* The interview format was surreal. It was setup like an inquisition,
with raised, circular seating around the director sitting in the
center.
* It was one of those situations (which I understand because I've been
in them) where everybody else is having the argument for the first
time, and the director is having it for the 500th time. He is armed
to the teeth, and knows every punchline, every twist and turn of the
labyrinth, and every slippery way out when things get hairy. More
than that, he's a smooth talker.
* The director's defenses of the film as anti-violence
pro-social-change just didn't sync with the way the majority of the
audience receives the film (and even his own assessment of this). You
got the impression that this is one of those times when an artist
makes a work of art he knows is really good, but that he doesn't
disagree with. The dignified thing to do when this happens is just
take the heat (and the money) and just shut up, because the defense is
just going to be half hearted and slimey.
* If there was a woman in the panel, she did not speak during the part
I observed.
* Questioners mostly academic. One standout was a police captain from
the military police in Rio.
* I'd heard this before, but he clarified: the movie was filmed in
some of the favelas it documents (as no less than war zones). At one
point the film crew was held up and robbed by traffickers. But even
more interesting, at one point the folks from BOPE (the SWAT team)
were around when they were filming a torture scene involving a plastic
bag over the head and threatened sodomizing with a broomstick.
Filmmakers were worried the police would interfere, but when the
police came down and interrupted, it was to say "hey, you're doing
this all wrong. The bag is supposed to be like this, so it won't
leave a mark". Etc.
* Director describes interview with journalist where the journalist
lays down a series of reasons why the film is definitively fascist,
and a series of lame responses.
* I think there are English subtitles of the film on the internet now.
A search brought me to this collaborative subtitling forum, which is
incredible:
http://www.divxsubtitles.net/forum/showthread.php?p=5614
* I'd like to get the interview subtitled too.
* The host of what somebody described to me as a cheesy pop TV show
for teenagers and kids was robbed a few days back for his rolex, and
wrote an op-ed about it saying, wistfully, "where's Captain
Nascimento? [the protagonist uber-cop]"
* The film is definitely succeeding at provoking a massive debate, and
it's giving him a forum to strongly state the benefits of
decriminalization, and a fresh-start restructuring of the Military
Police.
