Hi everyone!
Welcome back for another week of reviews!
Tonight’s the big night! The 92nd Academy Awards will be held today at 5:00pm PST, and we’ll see just how the Academy distributes their praise. We’re also catching up on a number of Oscar nominees this week, including today’s review for one of the more insightful documentaries from last year, and an Oscar nominee for Best Documentary Feature. I’ll be up in a minute with my thoughts on 2019’s THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY.
Be sure to stay tuned with us all week! Tomorrow I’ll be reviewing perhaps the most unknown of the nominees, 2019’s BREAKTHROUGH, which is not my usual cup of tea. On Tuesday, Jon-David returns with his review of 2019’s MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL. On Wednesday, I’ll be reviewing a low-budget adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft story, in a film titled THE DARK SLEEP. On Thursday, Keith Lyons returns with his review of Oscar nominee HONEYLAND. On Friday, Andrew has another Fantastic Fest offering, this time a challenging and thought-provoking French film. And on Saturday, I’ll be reviewing TO DUST, a dark comedy about dealing with loss, as part of our Under the Kanopy series.
Over on our Patreon page, at patreon.com/onemoviepunch, we just put up our full interview with writer/director Alex Goldberg, where we discuss his low-budget daytime noir film CLOSURE (2019), starring his spouse Catia Ojeda. We also talk about his extensive work as a playwright and what it’s like working with your spouse. The interview will be publicly available for a limited time, but you can maintain access by contributing to One Movie Punch at any level. All contributors become eligible for Sponsor Sundays, where you can force me to review a film for the podcast, as long as we haven’t reviewed it, with just a few exceptions. Check back next week for a Sponsor Sunday episode reviewing 2008’s THE DARK KNIGHT, thanks to the generosity of the Ocho Duro Parlay Hour. A promo for Sponsor Sundays will run before the review.
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Here we go!
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Today’s movie is THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY(2019), the political documentary directed by documentarian Petra Costa, and written for the screen in collaboration with Carol Pires, David Barker, and Moara Passoni. The film reviews the rise and the current fall of Brazilian democracy, looking at how media moguls divided the population in two, which allowed a far-right government to take power, all from Costa’s unique perspective and with her unique access to top government officials.
No spoilers.
About a year ago, I had to stop taking in the daily news. I used to listen to two plus hours of news, mostly Democracy Now and The Intercept, along with a handful of commentary shows, and a couple anarcho-communist podcasts specifically about community organization and resistance. I was a political animal, tracking elections, major news stories, evaluating sources, and coming to three very clear conclusions: (1) we spend way too much on the military and not enough on social programs; (2) massive wealth inequality, if not addressed, will become a massive social flashpoint; and (3) if we don’t address the impending climate collapse in due time, our entire civilization will be put at risk.
All of these conclusions come from a combination of scientific consensus and common sense, but this reality-based outlook has been under assault by the billionaires who control most of our media. And most people are media illiterate, generally believing that media literacy is hearing a bunch of different opinions and making up your own mind. Very few people will take the time to consider the sources, sift through rhetoric, examine data, and all the other parts of media literacy. Very few people also acknowledge that their favorite news programs have billionaire-driven agendas, or at the very least, advertising-driven agendas.
Cable news is a for-profit venture, and we should all be careful, regardless of political persuasion. Once you realize that, listening to the stories their channels choose to cover becomes nauseating, across the spectrum. Especially when they unjustly stoke the flames of social unrest through creating divisions. It’s why I still mostly rely on the fact-based journalism of Democracy Now and The Intercept, both of which are featured heavily in today’s documentary, even if they have a so-called “left-leaning slant”. It’s also why watching THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY is so important, because Petra Costa documents the very destructive power of the media in Brazil, which could easily be a template for similar governmental takeovers.
I came into THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY with a distinct advantage over most people, given my past media consumption. Costa calmly lays out all the major events, from the first fights for democracy by her parents under the US-backed military dictatorship, all the way to the present day. Most of the major events featured in the documentary were stories I heard live on Democracy Now as they happened. And each of those major events, at the time, came with a host of political analysis from journalists and pundits, most of which are arguing comfortably from studios for a mostly myopic audience. Each event is generally taken out of its important context, and abstracted into some argument about “liberty” or “freedom”, usually with more than a few lies from the more deceptive news outlets.
The real value of Costa’s work is that it places all of these individual events back into their necessary context. Lula isn’t reduced to some alleged criminal politician, but also a long-time labor organizer who brought in Brazil’s great economic prosperity through sensible policies. Dilma Rouseff isn’t just another alleged criminal politician, but a former revolutionary who endured torture at the hands of the military dictatorship. We don’t get the headlines that shocked the populace and the world; we get the actual trumped-up charges and corrupt actions of politicians and judges. We get a full, complete, and consistent story – which completely shreds nearly all the mainstream political analysis in the United States. THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY may not be able to stop the rapid descent into Brazilian fascism, but it will serve as an important addition to the historical record.
THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY should also serve as a warning tale for our own political situation in the United States. Just as media literacy requires much more than evaluating opinions, media criticism needs to be a lot more than simply calling things “fake news”. I am most definitely an advocate for both freedom of speech and freedom of the press, but I am not an advocate for the ability to lie, whether directly or by omission. The United States used to have a fairness doctrine in place for the media, but that was mostly revoked under Reagan, which gave rise to the cable news of today. They yield enormous power, can drive public opinion, and receive regular injections of capital every four years from our election process. I don’t want to disband the press, or censor anyone, but a re-instatement of the fairness doctrine would be a good first step towards bringing sanity back to our new media.
Towards the end of THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY, and as we get closer to the present day, we see the full force of the Brazilian media begin demanding that corruption is rooted out from the Brazilian government. We see their readership rise and their pundits get more air time, and government officials compromising themselves and their colleagues to survive the bloodletting. We see the same kind of political power of the press in the United States, because conflict sells. We also see the power of billionaires buying advertisements on those same stations and papers, which lead to stories attacking progressive populist candidate Bernie Sanders. And rest assured, those same media outlets will attempt to have a field day with Sanders should he win the presidency, likely using the same tactics documented in THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY, because his policies run counter to their bottom lines. We need to be literate and critical if we want to prevent what happened in Brazil from happening here, assuming it’s not already too late.
THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY is a powerful documentary that documents the rise and near collapse of Brazilian democracy, from the revolution against the dictatorship through the present rise of the far-right fascist government. While expertly placing each major event into a consistent context, the film also serves as a warning tale for other media-driven societies, and a plea for real media literacy and criticism. Documentary fans, or folks who want a succinct, if depressing look at recent Brazilian politics, should definitely check out this film.
Rotten Tomatoes: 97%
Metacritic: 81
One Movie Punch: 8.5/10
THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY (2019) is rated TV-14 and is currently playing on Netflix.
