"A idade da terra" is both suggestive and abstract. It stimulates a divine satisfaction, its rewarding but overly unstructured, annoyingly insane, and punishingly long. The film presents a whole state of mind, a mind that believe in the greatness of religion, its supreme purposes, to bring hope, meaning, answer's, strive. The worship of a superhuman controlling power, a personal kingdom of god within every man. If religion never existed: the Pyramids would never exist, world history would never exist. All the grandest achievements of mankind would cease from the earths surface. If religion didn't exist everything would change. Countries, languages, fashion, politics. Religion was what gave revolution for the renaissance. Religion gave birth to science. Its the source of morality, thy what is good, thy what is evil. Religion is the best placebo. The very idea of a miracle gives people hope, when acceptance gives death. It shows christ in a underdeveloped but modern part of the "Third World" . Christ - a primitive phenomenon in a very primitive, very new civilisation.
Rocha's last film is a culmination of his avant-garde cinematic language, portraying Brazil in a series of scenes, painting a cinematographic postcard of the country with a barrage of dances, parties, songs, theatrics, discussions and speeches on Brazil's history and politics, religious scenes, with passionate actors as society's archetypes. Bizarre performances in a world of war and peace. Freedom and slavery. A world of Black man, white man. Devil and God. The new world, the old world. Glauber sees the world changing as its core of the wretched Earth shrivels into darkness, he knows the world must evolve for if it did not it would become dust. Possessed by a demon - his heart screams, his vocal chords hum. If only it were the reverse.
"A Idade da terra" = The last warcry from a revolutionary director.
