Bicho de Sete Cabeças
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Bicho de Sete Cabeças (Brainstorm) |
|
|---|---|
 Movie Poster |
|
| Directed by | Laís Bodanzky |
| Produced by | Maria Ionescu Fabiano Gullane |
| Written by | Luís Bolognesi Austregésilo Carrano Bueno (book) |
| Starring | Rodrigo Santoro Othon Bastos Cássia Kiss Jairo Matos Caco Ciocler Luís Miranda Valéria Alencar Altair Lima Linneu Dias Gero Camilo Marcos Cesana |
| Music by | André Abujamra |
| Distributed by | Columbia TriStar (Brazil) |
| Release date(s) | 2001 (Brazil) |
| Running time | 74 min / Canada:90 min / France:84 min |
| Language | Portuguese |
| IMDb profile | |
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
This is a trip to the mental institution hell. This odyssey is lived by Neto, a middle class teenager, who lives a normal life until his father sends him to a mental institution after finding drugs in his jacket's pocket. The marijuana cigarette is just the final drop that exposes the family tragedy
Neto is a teenager that seeks emotions and freedom, who has his small rebellious actions that are misunderstood by his father. The lack of understanding between both of them takes him to silence up at home and by fearing the loss of control over his son, the father turns love the opposite way around.
Sent to a mental institution, Neto gets to know a completely absurd, inhumane reality in which the people are devoured by a corrupt and cruel institutional system. The documentary type language used by the director gives this movie a sensation of reality that increases even more the impact of the emotions Neto goes through. In the mental institution, Neto is forced to mature. The transformations that he goes through change his relations with his father.
[edit] The book that inspired the film
The movie Bicho de Sete Cabeças (Brainstorm) was inspired in the book called Canto dos Malditos (The Song of the Damned), written in the late 1970s by the curitibano Austregésilo Carrano Bueno. The book is an autobiographical work in which Carrano tells his personal tragedy after his father sent him to a psychiatric hospital once he found out he smoked marijuana. Carrano's book is a visceral chronicle that denounces with extreme soberness, despite of the great suffering, the monstrosity of the Brazilian psychiatric system and the hypocrisy of the Brazilian society in the face of drugs. The book was recommended for its first edition by the curitibano writer Paulo Leminsky.
The movie adapts itself to the present days because our reality hasn't changed much in these last twenty years. Still today, it is extremely common to see families sending their children to psychiatric hospitals because of the use of drugs. The research coordinated by the director, Laís Bodanzky, found women that were in these hospitals because of infidelity towards their husbands and an extremely high number of cases for alcohol abuse (the Health Ministry informs that alcoholism is responsible for 12% of the cases).
Currently, the writer Austregésilo Carrano is a militant of the anti-mental institution movement. Not only did Carrano write Canto dos Malditos (Damned's Song), but also Textos Teatro (Theatrical Texts), a compilation of six plays, and, currently he is working on a romance Filhas da Noite (Daughters of the Night), that deals with the universe of drug traffic, homosexuality, prostitution and the police departments.
While the script was being elaborated, Luiz Bolognesi invented situations and characters. Another book that greatly inspired the movie was Carta ao Pai (Letter to the Father), by Franz Kafka.
[edit] Cast
- Rodrigo Santoro (Neto)
- Othon Bastos (Mr. Wilson)
- Cássia Kiss (Neto's Mother)
- Jairo Mattos
- Caco Ciocler
- Luís Miranda
- Valéria Alencar
- Altair Lima
- Linneu Dias
- Gero Camilo
- Marcos Cesana
