| Film Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5

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| Film Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5 | The History Cooperative

Film Review

Carandiru. Directed by Hector Babenco. Produced by Walter Salles. Written by Hector Babenco, Victor Navas, and Fernando Bonassi. Brazil. 2003; color; 146 min. Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics (U.S.) and Mongrel Media (Canada).
Hector Babenco's film Carandiru is a powerful visual recreation of life in the São Paulo penitentiary system in the early 1990s. Through the narrative voice of the prison's medical doctor, ample use of flashbacks, and impressive cinematography by Walter Carvalho, Babenco has invented a new genre: the "Brazilian prison epic." The film gives viewers a picture of what life was like for inmates in the grim Brazilian prison system and ends with the bloody massacre of 111 prisoners by the military police's shock troopers on October 2, 1992. Unfortunately, Babenco misses the opportunity to engage viewers emotionally with the rich political and social historical material, and instead has created a visual text that often meanders without any clear direction.	1
Babenco's choices are surprising because the film is based on Drauzio Varella's compelling nonfiction work, Estaçåo Carrandiru, which captured the author's experience as a volunteer medical doctor trying to bring about AIDS awareness and prevention in the São Paulo prison system for nearly twelve years. In addition, the film follows in the tradition of many of Babenco's socially conscious films such as Pixote (1980), Kiss of the Spider Woman (1984), and At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1991), all of which focus on the marginalized sectors of American societies.	. . .

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