By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 20 2004 (IPS)

More than a million Brazilians flocked to the cinemas over the past month and have been moved by the film ”Cazuza, o tempo nao pára” (Cazuza: Time Doesn’t Stop), reviving the late poetic rock-and-roll rebel of the 1980s, with his excesses of sex and drugs, and his intense but undefined nostalgia.

”This is the first great Brazilian musical film (because) it has music as a theme” but does not try to overpower it, says Caetano Veloso, with the authority of the world-renowned singer-songwriter he is, and as someone who has directed film himself: ”Cinema falado” (Spoken Cinema), in 1986.

It is also ”one of the boldest portraits of a romantic character” in film, wrote Veloso in a commentary for Jornal do Brasil newspaper.

Cazuza, born Agenor de Miranda Araujo Neto, personified many of the traits of a romantic hero of the 1980s. A promiscuous gay man and continual drug user – mostly marijuana and alcohol – he died aged 32 in 1990 from complications related to AIDS.

He was among the first celebrities to go public with the disease, exposing himself to the prejudice, discrimination and hypocrisy that permeated the public’s perception of HIV/AIDS at the time.

He symbolised a middle-class youth rebellion that, with its strong desire to experience life, clashed with the uncertainties of what was known as Latin America’s ”lost decade”, which in Brazil coincided with the period of redemocratisation after the 1964-1985 military dictatorship.

”Ideology”, ”Exaggerated” and ”Bourgeois” were among some of his hits, included on eight albums (three with Barao Vermelho) that he participated on in the period from 1982 to 1990.

”Brazil, show your face…/ What is your business? / The name of your partner?… / They didn’t bribe me / Is it the end of me?” – some of the lyrics to the song ”Brazil”, these words are imprinted in the memory of millions of Brazilians, in large part because it was the theme song for a wildly popular TV series, ”Vale Tudo”, which portrayed the cynicism reigning in the country in the 1980s.

The film – biographical, but not completely faithful to the events of Cazuza’s life – played down the sex question, say critics, in order to avoid a rating that would have prevented teenagers from seeing it in theatres.

For example, ”O tempo nao pára” omits the important relationship Cazuza had with another singer, the older Ney Matogrosso.

Directing was shared by Sandra Werneck, a noted filmmaker of the generation that has emerged in the past decade, and Walter Carvalho, considered the best cinematographer in the Brazilian industry today.

The vertiginous pace of the handheld camera, the granulated images and the massive crowd scenes from the first ”Rock in Rio” in 1985 do a good job in portraying the spirit of the 1980s and of the numerous rock and roll bands that erupted on the scene in Brazil in that era.

But it is the work of Daniel de Oliveira, who plays Cazuza so convincingly, that made the film a success. The actor had to lose a great deal of weight to portray the singer in the final years of his life when his body was ravaged by the effects of AIDS.

The screenplay is based on the book ”So as maes sao felizes” (Only Mothers Are Happy), like one of Cazuza’s songs, written by his mother, Lucinha Araujo.

With ”Cazuza, o tempo nao pára”, the Brazilian film industry continues its search for a formula that unites music and the big screen. There has been frustration in bringing to the cinema two of the activities in which the country stands out: music and football.

In the past – four or five decades ago – a kind of musical film was popular in Brazil, linked to songs from the country’s famed Carnival and known disparagingly as ”chanchada”.

An alternative that has seen an upswing recently are documentaries about famous musicians. Last year there were two critically acclaimed feature-length films about pianist Nelson Freire, and another about Paulinho da Viola, singer and composer of the samba music typical of Rio de Janeiro.

Now the musical biography of Cazuza has joined them, and with great success.

As for football, films are in the works about former Brazilian stars on the pitch and their personal tragedies. For now, fans are content with ”Pele eterno” (Pele Forever), a documentary about the life and ”art” of Brazil’s greatest footballer, which premiered in June.

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