Somewhere off the coast of Bahia there is the small fishing Village inhabited by mainly ''freed'' African people, who make an incredibly meagre living by fishing the coastlines. They keep to a strict belief in an old Sea Goddess know as lemanjé who observes the oceans and keeps the water's calm when all is in the right balance.
Or at least this is the idea.
These unfortunate people live a life of extreme poverty. Most of them have little to no comprehension of reading and they spend most of their days keeping to the Seas for fish and maintaining whatever meagre amount of supplies they have.
It seems not everybody's happy with this Arrangement.
There's this random guy (Firmino) who's decided to go is own way and I suppose he's a criminal because he keeps saying he's a criminal and that he has a million problems with police. He decided to get himself dressed out in a really nice 1930's style Zoot Suit kind of get up.
He keeps complaining and moaning all the other fishermen that they should rise up against their oppressive master and become true Free People.
It's a whole social commentary thing and as much as I'd like to agree with the guys motive, I can't really agree with the guy himself. Firmino's a self-centred jerk who really doesn't care about any of these people.
He'll sell you up the river (or in this case sell you out to the ocean) he'll do everything in his power to manipulate a situation so that he can get revenge on this other guy that he doesn't like because he's seen as some sort of define prodigy that might bring balance to the ocean currents.
Or maybe he's really ticked at the guy because his girlfriend seems to have an interest in him.
I certainly don't blame her for it.
For one thing Firmino is an abusive idiot who smacks her around and tells her how much he needs her and how great of a person he is and how if he could; He'd totally kill that other guy to prove a point.
This girl could certainly do a lot better than Firmino. She kind of does at one point as she decides to sleep with that other guy on the beach.
I don't know if that technically makes her right. That you're cheating on your boyfriend, but given how much of a colossal asshat he is I can't really blame her for doing it.
Besides which Firmino ends up convincing this other random guy to go out to the ocean because of some nonsense about their ocean Queen and this leads to two other guys going out to the water looking for him and then one of them dies. The entire Village throws the supposed Prodigy son to the wind and decides that he's not worthy of the title anymore.
So you know what. Forgive me if I don't think Firmino deserves any affection.
The other random character we have in this film is this weird token white girl who I think is perceived as being smothered by the sea goddess herself after her father went out to see for some time.
I'm not 100% on that because the English translation I had this movie was a little strange and it went by incredibly quickly.
It also doesn't help that I really didn't care for this girl. She's just weird and standing around gawking at everything. I think her character was supposed to be suffering with schizophrenia, she has some sort of convulsion at one point and then these other random women just kind of ring bells around her and constantly Circle her just adding confusion.
We also have some sort of animal sacrifice thing going on here which I didn't like.
And that's not a mark against African spiritualism or any other sort of belief.
I don't like animal sacrifice in any way shape or form.
It doesn't matter if they're talking about it in the Torah or if they're talking about it in one of the Hindu Vedas.
I just think animal sacrifice is something that people can move on from.
So I'm done an awful lot of complaining about 2 really pacific characters. What's good about the film?
Well first there's the music.
An awful lot of the film is just musical numbers and people kind of dancing around. For the most part I find it fairly enjoyable. There's some on editing choices where some of the songs kind of drop out. But otherwise it comes off perfectly serviceable.
And there's this great gimmick the film has where two characters decide to fight.
They don't just go at each other with fisticuffs but instead they kind of do this Jump Around dancing routine where you can kind of see how they would be fighting in real life. But at the same time they're just making it look more interesting with the camera.
I guess it's also a good way of ensuring the actors don't actually punch each other in the face by accident.
I can appreciate this. It's like watching a stylised dual only with your fists as opposed to swords.
Overall I did enjoy the story of this fishing Village just trying to live their lives. Doing everything in their power to try and keep up their Spirits up. Even when it seems like the Goddess of the sea is turning on you. Or when they have to deal with that jerk Firmino who would rather be sitting around in a fine suit drinking than actually helping out his community.
It just seems like no matter what's happening in their lives they tend to cope with it. You can't entirely tell if the film wants you to conceive that the spirituality is actually an asset or if it's just superficial nonsense.
As character seemed to jump back and forth between Orthodox thinking and rationalise living.
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