Discuss Glauber Rocha’s approach to violence and morality in God and the Devil in the Land of Sun.

Glauber Rocha’s purpose as a filmmaker, as he explains, has always been to contribute to the creation of a cinema that is genuinely Brazilian, based on national features, which can facilitate the social and political awareness required for the transformation of Brazil as a country. In the course of forming an identity for a new national cinema, which sought to deviate from the conventions of the Hollywood model, Glauber Rocha often employs themes such as hunger, violence and morality. These, in their most true-to-life forms, consolidate the harshness of the reality that permeates Brazil, particularly the Northern area, and differentiates from the idealistic American archetype.

Notably in his film ‘God and the Devil in the Land of the Sun’ the aesthetics of violence and hunger is connected with the transformation of an established order or situation. The formula for this violence is different, in terms of its realisation, from the ones that are evident in American movies, where there is a strong emphasis on the confrontation between good and evil and a tendency to depict characters with supernatural capabilities. In Glauber Rocha’s film, violence is part of a social process; it is historically conditioned by the horror, the calamity and the crisis that pervades the north-eastern part of Brazil.

The film is a sort of investigation or criticism of this area, and throughout its length Glauber captures the hardship of this area. He communicates, through images and dialogue, through the drought, the social inequalities, the misery, the hunger, the religiousness and the chain of power, the relationship between cause and effect. That is to say, the violence in ‘God and the Devil in the Land of the Sun’ is consequential of the peculiarities that trouble social life. Glauber Rocha cited, “I do not construct scenes of violence thinking of a spectacle, but because there exists a sentimental tradition of violence in Latin America: it is a trait of an underdeveloped country, a process of barbarism.”

Likewise, morality is quintessentially different in that there is a very ambiguous margin between good and bad, much like the ambiguous distinction of villain and hero in the film. The character’s ability to judge right from wrong is subjective to the situation they find themselves in. While the common enemy appears to be the misery of the Hinterlands, the people are willing to go through with anything for the prophecy that “the sertao will become sea, and the sea sertao.”Similarly the viewers ability to distinguish right from wrong, good and evil, is distorted by the inseparable similarities between nominally polar opposites such as the Black God and the White Devil, who both prophesise the liberation of the people and use similar means of violence to achieve this.

The depiction of the Hinterlands through characters whose only means to impose their will on society are through primative social codes such as violence, and where morality is uniquely subjective and always changing, creates a realistic reconstruction of the Hinterlands during the first half of the 20th century. Accordingly, the opening scene of the movie embodies the violence of the weather, the terrain and atmosphere in the Northern east. The jawbone and the eye of a carcass of an ox killed by the drought epitomises this. Nothing is more representative of the aridity and of the cruelty of the region, which fiercely claims the life of living things. The landscape is prairie, dry, missing plants and with plenty of life unworthy of being called natural. This introduction pervades the viewers mind and the scenery assaults the viewer’s eyes. It instils in our minds the precarious condition of the land, of drought, of death and hardship. Likewise, the manifestation of the cordel embodies this cry for help. The verses are melodramatic, cutting the entire film like a didactic element, which along the film presents the different characters and situations. This violent setting conveys the misery, the scarceness and the fight for survival that the Northeastern people have to cope with. In this vein, the initial appearance of Manuel and Rosa characterise this sense of misery and helplessness. They are dissolved of any belongings, dominated by those in power, and can only have hope, be it on God or the Devil, on something that could lead them towards a future. This is evident in Rosa’s frivolous attitude as Manuel talks enthusiastically about Sebastiao, and later when it becomes clear that the appropriated response for the misery that troubles their relationship is violence, through her killing Sebastiao. Glauber Rocha employs various techniques to dramatise the violence in God and the Devil in the Land of the Sun. The language in the film is harsh and aggressive. Manuel, when speaking to Rosa about the promises made by Saint Sebastian says: "The whole earth is dry, it’s bad, it never bore anything worthwhile"; Corisco, referring to his life, says: "My fate is so dirty that not all blood in the world can wash it; Antonio das Mortes comments on the death of the ‘beatos’: "I did not kill the ‘beatos’ for the money. I killed them because I cannot rest living with this misery. "These examples of the powerful language, together with realistic and sometimes shocking imagery (skinning the boyfriend of the daughter of a colonel, tied to a tree stand, for example), encapsulate the violence and lack of morality that permeates the Hinterlands. The assassination of Colonel Morais is the first sequence of physical violence in the film. Following an argument with him over the settlement of some cattle, Manuel feels victimised, humiliated, and revolts by using his knife to kill the Colonel. The sequence is abrupt, with sharp cuts, dramatic soundtrack, and a handheld camera that frantically follows the horses, focusing on the men wrestling along the ground, marking the agitated atmosphere. Violence is depicted as the only way in which Manuel can realise justice, when morality stipulates that the law is with the colonel. It is represented as an everyday essence, keen to his survival. It is through violence that Manuel escapes different levels of confinement, and through death that he can emerge into an entirely new situation.

Thereafter, violence is portrayed as a way of purification and redemption. The idea of sacrificial redemption, and of redemptive violence is repeated throughout the movie. Nominally, the beating of the prostitutes as a form of purifying the women who have gone astray, of punishing the flesh to save the spirit and the long scene where Manuel is trying to carry the stone on his head, kneeling on the path to Monte Santo. Filmed by hand with no soundtrack, these scenes are anxious to watch, and represent the total offering of oneself to the Beatos and to the pious ritual of purification.

The extremity of Manuel’s devotion to this cult and unquestioned adoption of its moral values is evident through the sacrifice of the innocent child to redeem and purify Rosa’s spirit from her alleged possession. This sequence is formed through a juxtaposition of contrasting moments. On the one hand, there is the silence of the chapel, the preparation for the ritual of sacrifice, and on the other hand, the noise of the people who hysterically chant religious recites as Manuel claims that Rosa is possessed and drags her to the chapel. The atmosphere of the ordeal is well encapsulated by the setting, with an altar, candles, dimmed lights, and absolute silence. The saint with just one thrust slowly and mercilessly stabs the baby, and with the bloody blade draws a cross on Rosa’s face. The evangelical practice of the Beatos, based on a fictitious faith that enforces fanatical and hysterical activities such as this, is part of the religious mysticism that Glauber Rocha is trying to invalidate as these prevent the people from seeing the real problem, which is the hunger and drought. The violence presented in ‘God and The Devil’ is metaphorical, the very same language of myths and fictional adventures. The film is a dream-like creation, a fable. Glauber Rocha uses this thematic element as an objection against the political and social condition that historically attribute to the poverty of the Northeast and as a manifest against the mystic and alienating forces that prevent the Hinterlands from adopting a genuinely revolutionary and liberating conduct. Fittingly, Sebastiao’s murder by the hands of a voiceless Rosa is an affirmation of this remonstration. The saint falls dramatically bringing down the symbols on the altar.

This scene is sharply panned to Antonio das Mortes massacre of the “beatos” in Monte Santo, as ordered by the church and Politicians. Antonio appears to be multiplied, shooting the ‘Beatos’ that run around disoriented. After the massacre, the camera focuses on the victims, slowly, as it moves to a scene where Antonio is walking towards the chapel, characterised by his calculated and restrained movements that indicate his corrupted destiny. In one sense, this scene typifies the institutional violence employed by the Catholic Church, represented by the pragmatic and treacherous deed of the vicar who contracted Antonio das Mortes to kill the ‘Beatos’. The church is depicted as an institution that will stop at nothing to quickly eliminate those that harm its interests and threaten its hegemony.

In another sense, Antonio’s introduction foregrounds the violence and condemnation that both he and Corisco embody throughout the entire film, under the allegedly common destiny of liberating the people from misery by means of death and to prepare for the “great war without the blindness of God and the Devil” by getting rid of all evil. Antonio das Mortes “is violence as a species of euthanasia.” He also believes in the power of violence as a redemptive force for the Northeast and takes on task of clearing the land from the evils of mysticism and banditry.

Similarly, Corisco is committed to this role of vigilante. When he first appears with his two henchmen and Dada, in his vengeance of Lampiao’s death he says: “
“I’m fulfilling my destiny… I don’t let the poor die of hunger! Aaaaa! I’ll avenge in life and death my friend Lampiao”. Corisco promises a justice that is morally distorted. He says: "Men on this earth are only meaninful when you take arms to change your fate… with the rifle and the dagger. " When him and his men take over Colonel Calazans farm, who was known as a government man and a traitor, they steal and break household objects, and even rape the colonel’s daughter. Manuel and the rest of the gang castrate her fiance and then skin him, subsequently hanging him on a tree. Though this is the only scene in which Glauber demonstrates the cruelty that saturated incidents of banditry, it is quite clear that Corisco, a representation of the cangacos, has long discarded morality for violence.

Finally, as Antonio completes his objective in the film, fulfilling his destiny when he finds Corisco, duels and kills him, there is a sense that Manuel is freed from the enslavement of myths, and allowed to run towards the dream of a future. The final scene is that of the vast ocean, which reverberates the fulfilment of the utopian promise made by the Black God and White Devil of a land that will become the ocean.

Conclusively, violence is one of the most striking themes throughout ‘God and the Devil in the Land of the Sun’. Not just the physical violence, the bloodshed, death or aggression that is disturbingly well pictured, but also the violence that is depicted in the peculiarities that disfigures the human life, from the authoritarianism of those in power to the malevolence of the religious authorities.