Pixote: A Lei do Mais Fraco

This is a difficult movie to watch, and would have been even more difficult had I known then that the actor playing the protagonist was in fact killed in his home by police at age 19. Pixote (PeeWee) is a street kid in Sao Paulo who is caught in a roundup triggered by a murder in which he had no involvement. He is committed to a juvenile prison where he witnesses brutality and exploitation that ordinary citizens try very hard to believe doesn't exist. When finally he escapes, he and three comrades survive by the only means they know, which is crime. What makes the film so heart-rending is that both Pixote and the actor portraying him clearly do not wish to be the characters life circumstances have made them. Pixote tries to trust and to love and to bond, but there simply is no room in his world for the gentle side of human nature. One is left at the end wanting desperately to do something for the Pixotes of the world, but what? Building more children's's prisons with higher walls surely is not the answer...

When one thinks of the Brazilian cinema it is this film Pixote which comes to mind. Hector Babenco gives us one uncompromising and brutal look at the lives of the street boys in Brazil's largest city Sao Paulo. One only hopes that it is 35 years since Pixote was released and the hope is things have improved for these kids who have to grow up way before their time.

The films centers on the title character played by a young actor who himself never made it out of the slums. Babenco used real street kid Fernando Ramos DaSilva as the ten year old Pixote who was killed at the age of 19 in a homicide that still raises questions. One thing this film does show is that Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence didn't make it to Brazil, especially for the young.

We see things in Pixote that you would never see in American cinema portrayed even now. Rape in a juvenile detention center is the established norm here, especially when it involves Jorge Juliao, a young cross dressing street kid. When the slightly older Gilberto Moura uses sex to assert authority over Juliao it's both frightening and touching. Poor Juliao has one rotten opinion of his own self worth from his experience. One gets the impression that home wasn't all that much better. But these things were being shown way before America even knew there were transgender issues. Juliao even more than DaSilva is who you remember from Pixote.

35 years later Pixote is a powerful and disturbing film.

Amazing, controversial, and painful are some essential adjectives to allocate this important piece of art, that depicts the searing and factual adolescence of the marginalized children; i.e. victims of our global village.

Pixote prepubescent, with the unflinching stare of the innocent-all-knowing, left an impression of raw truth in finding credence to the old African saying, "It takes a village to raise a child". The awful reality, though, that director Hector Babenco visualized is that Brazil, with it's confusing, twisted, and socio-economic disparity, is the cause of this robbed innocence. In desperation, we see these children in search of nurturing and love, but only permitted leftovers of what society has tossed aside. Institutionalized rape, prostitution, drug dealing, and murder are the only voice they have in order to be nurtured, be loved, and have power. The only thing that Brazil has to offer these lost children are predators; repeating the cycle of hopelessness. Brazil, as a nation is an unworthy parent.

In retrospect, I believe the film "Pixote" is a parable on the world governments turning a blind eye to the hunger pains of the destitute and impoverished victims of an ever-expanding economy; and the force of irresponsible globalization is leaving blood soaked tear trails of destruction through the interconnected avenues of the world. We see through the symbolism of a child that the inequality or disparity in society has a snowball effect causing cannibalism within ourselves.

Perhaps the most brutal filmic portrait of youth ever made; Charles Dickens meets Hieronymous Bosch in this tale of a group of boys struggling to survive in the reformatories and mean streets of Brazil as the cycle of prey transformed into predators is documented.

The saddest detail is to realize that this film, made almost twenty five years ago, documents a world that in terms of its poverty and depravity, has apparently changed very little. A brutal reality captured here but with some of the most layered acting I've ever seen in the history of film by a group of amateurs picked from the streets of Sao Paulo with no previous experience. Not one or two good performances, the entire cast is quite simply remarkable, and even sadder is the fact that most of them have probably now been swallowed by the street life they portrayed.

Not as sophisticated a vision as Bunuel's 'Los Olvidados' or as sensational as Clarke's 'Kids,' but in this genre of 'children growing up in the streets' it is easily the most emotionally powerful film of them all.

Pixote is probably the most powerful film I have ever seen. An aspect so rarely attained in most films is the gritty reality that Babenco exposes with paramount ability and care. It truly will stay with you forever--you will be touched in such a deep way no matter who you are, no matter where you're from, no matter what movie genre you favor.

Considering that Da Silva's own life was one of the streets, leading to an early death at nineteen, when he was killed by corrupt cops in a drug raid, the film becomes all the more disturbing when we realize that Da Silva truly is Pixote in a circle of life imitating art imitating life.

With no reliable source of aide, these street kids are forced to exist at a most extreme disadvantage. The brutal truth in this film may be difficult to digest, but we can't turn a blind eye. Ultimately, words aren't strong enough to do this film justice, you'll have to experience it yourself.