Lula works well as a campaign kickoff or generalist overview that knows exactly what it is and what it wants not to ask hard questions. It’s unfair to dismiss this kind of thing as pure propaganda, but when a documentary comes out sounding like an extended infomercial for the Brazilian president, it does seem to be edging toward canonization. At the same time, it’s a rare film that takes such a close look at such a complex figure who so dramatically shaped his country’s political and social landscape over the course of several decades.
Co-directed with Rob Wilson (who appears to have done most of the heavy lifting in fashioning this handsome and well-paced treatment), “Lula” centers around a sit-down interview director Oliver Stone conducted with Lula post-prison as he launched another presidential run.
There’s obviously something negative implied by calls for both sidesism, and the problem with the film isn’t its adoration of its subject. It’s just not very good even at these low stakes; all we really get is Wiki-level summary of how Lula went from union organizer to president over shots of him walking around factories or delivering rousing speeches. Stone smiles giddily at him throughout and asks softballs, incapable either of following up or digging any deeper.
Brazilian politics are fascinatingly complicated, and Bolsonaro is only one interesting thread in a country that has always had its populist streaks. After presenting Lula’s return like Lazarus rising from the dead, there isn’t even an attempt here to explain why 49.9% of Brazilians might see things differently unless you count Stone’s usual “CIA did it.”
The film does make an interesting case for media manipulation in taking down Lula only then to celebrate Glenn Greenwald using phone hacking to help bring Lula back into power. That media manipulation is poisonously corrosive unless done for “good” reasons is one element of many that underline just how narrow if not outright empty this whole endeavor is.
A real interviewer would have had Lula walk us through exactly what happened to land him in jail, rather than blanket the whole thing with conspiracy. He ran as an anti-corruption candidate and surrounded himself with people who were engaged in the ancient Brazilian tradition of corruption. At least tacitly allowing this to continue should seem like a problem, even if going to prison for money laundering in 2018 was overkill.
Similarly, the fall of other socialist leaders in the region is only presented as a consequence of foreign meddling. The picture overlooks the many ways in which corruption, mismanagement and brutal repression were not just features but were central to every political administration under review. This is not to discount real external pressures against such populist moves, it’s to say that this stuff is messy, and at each step Stone and Wilson’s movie tries to simplify it into “left good, right bad, US worst.”
It’s not like we haven’t had far more sophisticated takes on Brazil’s recent political tumult. Petra Costa’s extraordinary 2019 film The Edge of Democracy offers a much more subtle examination of what happened, an insider glimpse from someone who grew up among the elite at both the particularities of her own country’s situation and what happens everywhere when power corrodes no matter which side claims.
Seen through that lens, Stone and Wilson’s movie about Lula feels even more vacuous than it already did little more than something you’d show at a birthday party to make people feel good about themselves. It isn’t just biased it’s boringly biased, superficial even in its efforts at hagiography.
The film continues what has been somewhat of a documentary decline for Stone since his equally misguided mess about nuclear power that took a fascinating subject (secondary radiation) and made it secondary to the famous filmmaker himself ranting about how COVID and AIDS are government conspiracies. With JFK he kept up his quackery credentials and invited Trumpian conspiracy fans who decry fake news but love stories that suggest the government wants them dead.
So while Lula may be less pernicious and its well-paced construction likely reflects skilled assembly by Wilson & Co., there is little here from which one can gain understanding about the subject’s policies or ideas or even his goals for next term. Almost concurrent with its Cannes debut this year was Lula shaking markets by firing the CEO of the state oil company, further destabilizing a nation already on shaky economic ground. Maybe this is a sign of movement toward “state capitalism,” or part of broader second term shifts. In Stone’s telling, there’s nothing to help parse such motivations save empty sloganeering.
Probably the best thing one can say about Lula is that it does little harm. Even its insinuations of nefarious US machinations lack teeth, Brazil’s complexities do not lend themselves to easy blame compartmentalization. For viewers who know nothing of this amazing subject, they’ll get an amuse-bouche. For those looking for more, well Stone’s latest documentary folly will leave them hungry once again. Another in a recent string of films about subjects deserving deeper treatment squandered so that the filmmaker may yet again indulge his own biases and preconceptions.
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