THE HERO/O HERÓI(2004,
We hereby declare that Vitório Silva showed great courage and heroic behavior in the fight for the independence of our country . . .
Tall, handsome, strong, with a
sensitive and thoughtful face, the war hero trudges around
The war is over, or at least the
cancer of war is temporarily in remission. It is a time for shattered families to reunite
and restore their broken lives. However,
while the dream endures, the reality is very different. The capital city of
They are joined by the many
demobilized soldiers who had been promised a good life and decent work as
recompense for their years of privation, risk, and isolation. The government has plenty of “reintegration”
plans and patriotic rallies, but little else for them.
This is the city to which Vitório has come at the beginning of the film. He desperately needs a prosthetic leg, but
they are in short supply. He is
stubborn, persistent—he believes that the only barrier to gainful employment is
his lack of a prosthetic limb—and eventually prevails upon the hospital staff
to get him his leg. However, as we see,
doors still shut in his face, and he begins to seek solace and refuge among the
prostitutes and the bar-hounds, waiting for his chance to come. This in turn will create deeper challenges
for him, as it leads to the loss of his precious prosthetic leg.
At the same time, we have met and are following the story of another primary character, young Manu. Manu lives with his hard-working grandmother, who keeps a stall in the local market and struggles to keep them afloat. Manu’s mother left for the war when he was an infant, and his father—a widely-respected young man with enormous potential—was sucked into the conflict when Manu was just five years old. Manu vacillates between street-wise cynicism about his father’s fate and irrational dreams of his eventual return. Meanwhile, he is starting to get involved in street life, despite his obvious intelligence and academic ability. Leader of his own little gang, he is also the target of another gang, headed by a boy nicknamed Cácá, who is becoming a serious criminal. Both Cácá and Manu will become entangled in Vitório’s story.
A third strand of the film involves Manu’s vivacious, idealistic young teacher, Joana. Daughter of an African mother and a Portuguese father, she is a child of privilege and somewhat
naďve. She is very concerned about Manu’s lack of
performance in school for reasons that are initially unclear; eventually, we
learn that she carries a deep affection and admiration for Manu’s absent
father, whom she knew when she was just a teenager. For most of the film she is out of work,
because the teachers have been forced to go out on strike due to government
incompetence; this is extremely frustrating for her. She is an intermediary figure, linked to the
working class through the students to whom she is devoted, and to the ruling
class by birth and upbringing. As the
film progresses, she is reunited with her former boyfriend, Pedro, a spoiled,
Western-educated politician-in-training.
Through him, we are given a portrait of those in power that is not very
flattering, but seems very real (and not only for
The fourth strand is the story of
the prostitute Judite (this is her nom de guerre, the name that she took on
when she too was conscripted into the military; her real name is Bárbara). We learn
that she was separated from her son by the war, and has been searching for him
ever since. Left with few options, but
determined to survive, she has turned to prostitution. But she too has hopes for a better life.
The narrative manages to weave these four strands together into an effective, coherent whole, joined by with lovely background music that is at times haunting, at others happy and hopeful. It is like a dance, in which partners touch and then separate, touch and separate, toy with possibilities that may or may not work out.
* * *
Born in
Though it is his first feature
film, The Hero reveals the skilled
hand of an experienced filmmaker. The
editing moves us easily from narrative strand to narrative strand, alternating
easily between neo-realist long shots and intimate, emotional close-ups of his
actors. Unlike most films within the
Neo-Realist tradition, Gamboa chose to work with
professional actors, and it shows. He
received a certain amount of criticism for his casting, since few of his
principal actors are Angolan (only young Milton “Santo” Coelho, who plays Manu
is from Angola): the actresses who play Barbara and the grandmother are from
Brazil, the woman who plays the teacher is from Guinea-Bissau, and Oumar Makéna Diop,
who plays Vitório, is from Senegal (and had to be
dubbed). But the
director stubbornly stands by his decision, and indeed Makéna
Diop provides a very powerful performance here
(Festival audiences may remember him from the 1998 film TGV, and the 2000 film Lumumba). His Vitório is not a simple, despairing, passive victim (as is
often the case in films like this): he is proud, perceptive, stubborn, and
articulate. In fact, all of the
principal characters are played with subtlety and emotional complexity.
In the end, this film is a snapshot
of a time and a place, an
--Notes by Michael Dembrow