Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 13:57:01 -0500
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-I: "Four Days in September"


>From time to time I think about writing a novel based on my experiences in
the American Trotskyist movement. I have never followed through on this
project because deep down I realize that the beliefs of the people in this
movement were too different from those of ordinary Americans. How could I
possibly convey the reality of revolutionary politics to people who view
politics as nothing more that what they do on election day?

The makers of "Four Days in September" faced a similar problem. How could
they make a film based on the characters and events depicted in Fernando
Gabeira's book "O que é isso, companheiro" (What's Up Comrade?) and still
draw an audience? Gabeira was a member of a Brazilian terrorist cell that
kidnapped the American Ambassador Charles Elrick in September, 1969. They
sought to protest the military dictatorship that had just seized power, and
win freedom for imprisoned comrades.

Director Bruno Barreto, best known for his "Dona Flor and Her Two
Husbands," simply decided to dump the politics to make the film palatable.
"I did not make a film about politics but about human beings. I did not
make a film about ideas, but about the fears, desires and tensions involved
in a specific episode. Besides, no one would be able to stand to listen to
the actual way the terrorists spoke at the time."

Without politics, the film becomes a banal crime melodrama. Except for the
occasional rhetorical flourish about the "Revolution," the characters
mainly discuss the technical details of the kidnapping. To sustain the
audience's interest, Barreto emphasizes human relationships that have
little to do with politics. There is a budding romance between Maria
[Fernanda Torres], the ringleader, and Gabeira [Pedro Cardoso]. A filial
bond develops between Gabeira and Elrick [Alan Arkin] who turns out to be a
liberal opposed to the war in Vietnam and the military dictatorship in
Brazil. A key scene shows Gabeira allowing Elrick to view him with his mask
off, thereby revealing his humanity.

Gabeira develops a crush on  Maria when he is first sworn into the
terrorist cell. During the ceremony, she harangues the young recruits. She
assigns them each a nom de guerre: Fernando Gabeira then becomes "Paulo."
Along with their real names, they must leave behind all normal human
feelings that they had in their previous life. This scene evokes the
witch-hunt iconography of potboilers like the 1951 classic "I Was A
Communist For the FBI." These propaganda pieces inevitably include a
fanatical but beautiful female Communist cell leader who makes speeches
about how love is a bourgeois diversion.

In the production notes, Fernanda Torres is contemptuous of the character
she plays. She says, "Maria was sort of a 'sergeant' in the group, and, to
my mind, the least credible character in the script. I wasn't alive when
the kidnapping took place so I can't be sure if militant political women
really behaved like that." One can only wonder why Torres accepted the role
if she has so little identification with the character and shows so little
interest in finding out about what made such a character tick. Perhaps
there is no tradition of method acting in Brazil. According to the
principles method acting, character portrayal grows out the totality of the
character's social relations. The actor must try to go beyond the
dimensions of the script and immerse him or herself in the social milieu of
the character. This might mean driving a cab if the character is a
cabdriver. Of course, such background research would have done little to
add depth to a character whose dialog consists mainly of worries over
whether the kidnapping will be carried out successfully, punctuated by
tone-deaf "radical" rhetoric.

After a major bank robbery, Maria's gang decides to kidnap the American
Ambassador. Such an operation requires outside assistance so they call in
Toledo [Nelson Dantas] and Jonas [Matheus Nachtegaele], two veterans of the
terrorist movement. Toledo is a man in his sixties who fought in the
Spanish Civil War, while Jonas is a young working-class militant who is
even more unsmiling and case-hardened than Maria herself. Jonas, who takes
over the operation, warns the rest of the group that he will shoot anybody
who disobeys his orders. For the remainder of the film, Toledo and Jonas
are absorbed in the technical details of the kidnapping and we never
discover who they really are or what they believe.

In a letter to his wife, Elrick confesses his inability to understand the
fanaticism of Jonas. It never would have occurred to Leopoldo Serran, the
screenwriter, to fill in some background on such a character. Like the rest
of the people associated with the project, he was hostile to leftist
politics. He kept  resisting Barreto's invitation to write a script based
on Gabeira's memoir. "I refused several times, because I disagreed with
many of the leftist principles and practices, and I could not agree to do
anything complimentary or biased."

Perhaps Serran might have fleshed out such a character by studying the life
of one of Brazil's most famous workers, Lula of the Workers Party. He was
the youngest of 8 children born to subsistence farmers. In 1956, the family
moved to Sao Paulo, where they dwelled in one room at the back of a bar and
shared the bathroom with bar customers. Lula, unlike the terrorists of the
1969 generation, became the leader of a mass social movement. The same
sense of indignation that committed him to peaceful change, however, must
have fueled Jonas. It would have made for a much richer film if Jonas spoke
openly about the circumstances that led him to such extremist politics.

Toledo, admittedly a secondary character, only speaks about his doubts over
the success of the kidnapping. It would have been interesting to find out
something about the life of a character old enough to be a grandfather, who
has decided to take such drastic measures. (It is rather dubious that a
Spanish Civil War veteran would have ever joined a terrorist plot, since
these activists had an orientation to mass action. We would be asking too
much from a film that had so little interest in politics to try to explain
this anomaly)

Serran's enthusiasm is not for characters like these with their obnoxious
left-wing politics. He invests all of his power as a playwright into the
character of Henrique [Marco Ricca], the cop in charge of capturing the
kidnappers. Henrique feels torn between duty and revulsion over the torture
he carries out against revolutionaries in the basement of his police
station as part of his job. For Serran, there is a sexual aspect to torture
which is reflected in the script. Henrique mentions to his partner that a
political prisoner has fallen in love with and married one Pecanha, a cop
who tortured her. That Serran would even consider such an event as within
the realm of possibility shows how detached he is from the reality of
police repression. One can only hope that he never accepts an assignment to
write a screenplay based on Tomas Borge's memoir. Somoza's torturers beat
this Sandinista leader in the testicles repeatedly during his imprisonment
until he lost his manhood.

Ultimately "Four Days in September" is repression without violence. It
represses the real beliefs and the real motivations from the terrorist
band, as much as a gag over the mouth of a prisoner does. As difficult as
it would have been to translate the lives of terrorists into a commercially
viable film, a production company with some sympathy for the left should
have made the attempt. The director, the screenwriter and the actors are
all complicit in covering up the history of the desperate and marginal
Brazilian urban underground. The key to an authentic and dramatically
convincing film would have been in uncovering the history of each
character. Without such histories, the overall history of the times remains
a mystery.

Louis Proyect




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