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A Strange Friendship

Amos Lassen | Little Rock, Arkansas | 01/08/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

""Almost Brothers"

A Strange Friendship

Amos Lassen

"Almost Brothers" (First Run Pictures" is the story of a friendship between two men--Miguel, a senator and Jorge, a common criminal. They were friends as boys and meet again in prison where one is being held for political reasons, the other on drug charges.
This is an examination of Brazilian culture which is divided on racial, ethnic, social and gender lines. There are times when the lines blur, collide, crash and explode. In their childhood, Miguel and Jorge lived in the slums; the played and listened to music together but later Jorge became a drug baron and Miguel, a politician who once wanted to change the world (and is now a Communist). The movie looks at the time the two men spend in jail and they learn from each other.
Lucia Murat, the director, is a member of the Brazilian guerilla faction, looks carefully at the worlds that exist in her country. The tagline of the film, "We all have two lives, the one we dream and the one we live", describes the film perfectly.
The film uses a non linear narration and the intertwining of several stories from different periods of time. At first this is somewhat confusing but as the film progresses, everything comes together to give us quite a literate whole. We are constantly reminded that there are people from different worlds. The film looks deeply into the social process that brings about social crisis that Brazil experiences daily. Murat knows what she is doing when she deals with political prisoners having been one herself. But she does not dwell on the intellectuals that were forced to live with the "lesser" elements of society. Instead, she give the viewers a question and leaves it to him to arrive at his own answer.
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