Dispatches from the 2024 Tallgrass Film Festival

Othelo, oh Grande

I mention this quite often as a supporter of public radio, but a great joy in life is learning about something you had no idea existed, even if you feel a little embarrassed that you didn’t know about it. Grande Otelo was (so I hear) a hugely important Brazilian star, an actor, comedian and musician whose film credits easily run into the triple figures. His story is also one that can feel unfortunately familiar to American audiences, as it is throughout a story of perseverance in a racist society.

The film consists entirely (or seems so) of archive footage of Grande Otelo (born Sebastião Bernardes de Souza Prata), narrating his own life through bits of interviews among a huge number of photographs and film clips of the man. Early on, he describes a situation in which he is paid less than a companion for the same work, and he reveals a major theme of his story and the stories of so many others: “It was the beginning of something that has been a constant in my life. : exploitation.” He left home at a young age to begin a life of performing, although like many black American entertainers, he was often forced into cartoonish roles that played into the stereotypes that audiences apparently wanted, or in at least what the people who produced the work thought people wanted. Near the end of the film, he explains, “If you see me playing roles that don’t look anything like me, it’s because they don’t look anything like Brazilian blacks.” . But I had to make a living.”

Director Lucas H. Rossi does a great job of piecing all the footage together – it’s not always necessarily a linear journey except in broad strokes, but he keeps Grande Otelo in front of us throughout and shows his amazing charisma even in moments where the man barely moves.

But throughout, we are reminded again and again of the racism the artist faced, and the broader societal racism and oppression of black Brazilians, both within the country and from outside. We often return to the poverty of the favelas, we hear that Grande Otelo had to use back entrances to locations despite its enormous fame, and we are told about the time when Orson Welles came to Brazil to film for the US government, which was not there . too pleased with Welles’ focus on the country’s poverty and racism.

It’s probably true that a few times it feels like Rossi is filling up the time by showing us some more photos of Grande Otelo, which seemingly have nothing to do with the main thread of the story (except that it’s all about the entertainer goes), but maybe I’m just looking for nits to pick. I find myself increasingly interested in archival documentaries these days rather than the narrative or talking head kind, thinking about the amount of work they require and the creativity required to build a story from existing material. And to hear all this from Grande Otelo herself is quite riveting.

They call her dead

On to a different kind of exploitation…

There are ways to embrace a lack of budget when making a movie, and one of them is to pay tribute to previous films that were notable for their low price. If you can’t beat them, basically join them. Many of us are familiar with grindhouse exploitation films by now, largely because the likes of Quentin Tarantino trumpet their virtues (“virtues”), and so it makes sense to come back to that if you’re going to make a movie with very little in your pocket, because you can enjoy your film’s flaws instead of glossing over them. (There’s not much worse* than watching a movie that desperately tries to pretend to be something it’s not. I made a lot of those when I was in high school, and maybe you did too.)

They call her dead combines exploitation with the western, with much of it shot in Wichita’s own Cowtown, and tells us about Molly Pray (good name), whose husband is murdered by a man supposedly seeking justice for another murder (it’s more complicated – and more nefarious – than that). And so Molly seeks her own revenge, something she plans to exact not just from the man who killed her husband, but from everyone involved as she climbs the ladder of conspiracy.

A good, traditional format for this type of film, and as long as we stick to it, everything goes smoothly. Or at least that’s what happens in the end: the film is undoubtedly way too pleased with itself at the beginning, trying too hard to show us what it wants to be instead of just letting it be what it should be. I imagined being at a midnight screening of the film and hearing the only man in the audience laughing loudly and performatively at bits that aren’t nearly as funny as he makes them out to be.

But! It sinks in, and the last 40 minutes are extremely fun. Lots of good blood and guts, heads being blown off, etc. (and some genital mutilation, so watch out for that), and of course that’s what we’re here for. It hardly matters that this or that person may not be the best actor, or that the film has some technical flaws, because who can say which parts are intentional and which are not? That’s not the point. Or maybe that’s the point. My only wish is that maybe it all got even crazier than it is now: there’s plenty of room to get wilder with a movie like this, and it reaches a few heights, but there’s a lot more up there.

*I realize that there are in fact countless things worse than this.

The paper bag plan

A sweet, well-intentioned film with a beautiful execution and some terrible film decisions. We can’t have everything.

When Oscar discovers he has colon cancer, he realizes he must do more to enable his disabled son Billy to be independent. So he starts pushing Billy to cook for himself, do his own grocery shopping and, soon, get a job. Which job? What about plundering groceries from the local independent supermarket?

This is largely the film, with Oscar and Billy spending the rest of the time practicing and preparing to show the grumpy supermarket owner that Billy has the necessary skills and speed to perform the task, and Oscar is rather clumsy tries to teach Billy a lesson. few things and persuade the store owner to give his son the job.

Apparently he’s also trying to make up for a lot of lost time. I kept wondering why he’d never tried to teach Billy these things before. The son is clearly intelligent and capable, and while we get acknowledgment from Oscar for keeping Billy sheltered (and dealing with the absence of Billy’s mother), the man’s apparent lack of confidence in his son surprising.

Anyway, people do confusing things for all kinds of reasons, and so here we are, with Oscar wanting to help Billy become self-sufficient before he can no longer be there for him. The bright spot in all this is Cole Massie, who plays Billy, and who is full of charm and appeal. Massie rarely feels like he’s acting, and the whole time you feel like we should be spending more time with him, instead of Oscar (Lance Kinsey, who plays Oscar (and Proctor was in the film). Police Academy movies!) is fine, but Billy is much more interesting, and, with all due respect to Kinsey, so is Massie).

Oscar’s need to develop more trust in his son is clear, and that’s what he works on as the film progresses, but a lack of trust is also what holds the film back. This means that the film doesn’t trust us to have our own feelings about it. From the outset the score is manipulative, telling us what we should feel at any given moment, even insisting on it, and this is worse than distracting, it is intrusive. And director Anthony Lucero commits a glaring cinematic sin as the film draws to a close, showing us a flashback montage of “touching” moments from the film we’ve all just seen, as if we can’t remember and need to be told how feel. Please, parents, have faith in your children, and please, filmmakers, trust that we know how to watch a movie.

That said, it’s sweet. And more Cole Massie, please.