I am crazy about movies. And in my opinion, directors are probably the most under-rated in filmdom. More often than not, people (including myself) tend to know or recognize more the actors than the directors who craft the entire film.
Given my limited knowledge about the directors, there is one however whom I like and who seems to stand out among many. His name is Fernando Meirelles, a Brazilian film director, who offers the world masterfully crafted tales about the darker side of globalization.
In his film “City of God” for instance, it’s interesting how he seems to be intimate with the subject of poverty and hopelessness, and of how he was able to realistically depict the angst-ridden mind engendering other people and society as a whole. "City of God," his portrayal of poverty, drugs and crime in the slums of Rio de Janeiro of course, won a lot of accolades worldwide but his other film "The Constant Gardener," is equally an outstanding work. Based on a book of the same name by British author John le Carre, the film is about a British diplomat's meandering journey to Nairobi, Berlin, London and Sudan to unearth the truth about the death of his wife, who is killed when she was about to expose the world's largest pharmaceutical firms for testing a tuberculosis drug that is killing innocent African patients. "Disposable drugs for disposable people," a doctor tells the diplomat. "Pharmaceuticals are up there with the arms dealers."
I would like to think the story emanates from the much-publicized real-life conflict between multinational drug companies and Third World countries trying to produce their own generic versions of AIDS medications.
Talking about globalization issues, Meirelles also worked on "Intolerance," a movie with multi-country settings with diverse characters: a 16-year-old Brazilian genius, a Chinese worker, a Filipino terrorist, a Kenyan runner, an American educator, and a young woman from the United Arab Emirates. The movie has not been released yet I think and I can’t wait to watch it. It would be interesting to see how Meirelles is able to intricately weave the stories of these characters into a film. Something to look forward to indeed!
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2 comments:
Interesting my friend, I think an analogy can be made between football (soccer) coaches and film directors. Football coaches organize and maintain control over a group of 30+ players and if they (players) play badly, he gets the blame and gets sacked. Even if this is not normally how it works in the film industry, for obvious reasons, I think that coaches and film directors deserve more appreciation for their work for sure. Maybe producers also need some recognition :) They work their butts off too !
Wow. 6 years later and it's only now that I read your comment. Excellent parallelism. :)
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