Bye Bye Brazil

Summary

I really enjoyed watching the film Bye, Bye Brazil. I found it to be amusing as well as heartbreaking. I loved Gypsy Lorde. His character had the charisma bordering that of a male chauvinist pig to that of a gentleman. I liked the way the director used symbolic images to get his point across to the audience. I think if I had not done research on the Internet for most of our assignments as well as reading the textbook, I would have found the movie very educational. I had no questions after watching the film. However, it did make me realize how the majority of cultures will assimilate during the process of change, losing a little if not the majority of their traditions that were establish decades ago.

Bye, Bye Brazil (1980), a film by Carlos Diegues, tells a story about the struggle of two couples trying to find their dreams in a country, Brazil, that is being overcome by social changes and undergoing massive technological transformations. United by their dreams, the couples travel through the backlands of Brazil in a truck, to seek places where they can not only make a living, but also find their dreams. The insights gained in the course of the journey are insights of both acceptance and change.

The main character, the accordionist Cico, starts by joining the Carnival Rolidei as means of breaking out of his suffocating town, and from his pre-determined course of life. The character Gypsy Lorde is portrayed as an ambitious and cynical manager without scruples who is reluctant to see the changes around him. Salome, Gypsy Lorde companion, is as cynical as he, but transmits an air of quiet resignation to the fact that things are changing, whether they like it or not. The fourth character Dasdo, Cico’s wife, is very plain looking compared to Salome, very quiet, and passive. Like Salome, Dasdo also quietly resigns to the fact things are changing but she also tries to give an array of hope that the Carnival will survive and prosper. Bye, Bye Brazil unites in its characters and situations the same elements, which are part of the many processes that are transforming Brazil.

The carnival travels from poor town to another. You can see the surprise and disgust of the characters as they move from one part of Brazil to another. Finding that either the young have left behind their old for modernization or that the town people have been captivated by the magic and illusions presented by television. As with the carnival you can see how the old Brazil is fading away, to be replaced