Bicho de Sete Cabeças

Infobox Film
name = Bicho de Sete Cabeças
(Brainstorm)


caption = Movie Poster
director = Laís Bodanzky
writer = Luís Bolognesi
Austregésilo Carrano Bueno (book)
starring = Rodrigo Santoro
Othon Bastos
Cássia Kiss
Jairo Matos
Caco Ciocler
Luís Miranda
Valéria Alencar
Altair Lima
Linneu Dias
Gero Camilo
Marcos Cesana
music = André Abujamra
producer = Maria Ionescu
Fabiano Gullane
distributor = Columbia TriStar (Brazil)
released = 2001 (Brazil)
runtime = 74 min / Canada:90 min / France:84 min
language = Portuguese
imdb_id = 0263124|

"Bicho de Sete Cabeças" (English title: "Brainstorm") is a 2001 Brazilian film about a middle class teenager, who lives a normal life until his father sends him to a mental institution after finding a marijuana cigarette in his backpack.

Plot summary

Wilson de Souza Neto (aka "Neto") is a teenager that seeks emotions and freedom, skating and vandalising walls with a spraypaint can, who has his small rebellious actions that are misunderstood by his father. The lack of understanding between both of them takes him to silence up at home and by fearing the loss of control over his son, the father turns love the opposite way around, especially after finding a marijuana cigarette (a "baseado" in Brazilian drug slang) in Neto's backpack.

Sent to a mental institution, Neto gets to know a completely absurd, inhumane reality in which the people are devoured by a corrupt and cruel institutional system. The documentary type language used by the director gives this movie a sensation of reality that increases even more the impact of the emotions Neto goes through. In the mental institution, Neto is forced to mature, becoming more depressed and paranoid. The transformations that he goes through alter his relationship with his father in an unfavorable way.

The book that inspired the film

The movie was inspired by the book called Canto dos Malditos (The Song of the Damned), written in the late 1970s by Curitibano Austregésilo Carrano Bueno. The book is an autobiographical work in which Carrano tells his personal tragedy after his father sent him to a psychiatric hospital once he found out he smoked marijuana. Carrano's book is a visceral chronicle that denounces with extreme soberness, despite of the great suffering, the monstrosity of the Brazilian psychiatric system and the hypocrisy of the Brazilian society in the face of drugs. The book was recommended for its first edition by writer Paulo Leminski.

The movie adapts itself to the present days because reality hasn't changed much in these last twenty years. Still today, it is extremely common to see families sending their children to psychiatric hospitals because of the use of drugs. The research coordinated by the director, Laís Bodanzky, found women that were in these hospitals because of infidelity towards their husbands and an extremely high number of cases for alcohol abuse (the Health Ministry informs that alcoholism is responsible for 12% of the cases).

Later, the writer Austregésilo Carrano became a militant of the anti-mental institution movement. Not only did Carrano write "Canto dos Malditos" (Song of the Damned), but also "Textos Teatro" (Theatrical Texts), a compilation of six plays. He also worked on a romance titled "Filhas da Noite" (Daughters of the Night) that deals with the universe of drug traffic, homosexuality, prostitution and the police departments. Carrano died on May 27th 2008, due to liver cancer.

While the script was being elaborated, Luiz Bolognesi invented situations and characters. Another book that greatly inspired the movie was "Letter to His Father", by Franz Kafka.

Cast

* Rodrigo Santoro (Neto)
* Othon Bastos (Mr. Wilson)
* Cássia Kiss (Neto's Mother)
* Jairo Mattos, psychiatric institution employee
* Caco Ciocler, Neto's companion at mental asylum
* Luís Miranda
* Valéria Alencar
* Altair Lima
* Linneu Dias
* Gero Camilo, Ceará, inmate in the same asylum as Neto
* Marcos Cesana

External links

* [http://www2.uol.com.br/bichodesetecabecas/ Official website]
*
* [http://oglobo.globo.com/cultura/mat/2008/05/28/morre_escritor_que_inspirou_bicho_de_sete_cabecas_-546539400.asp Austregésilo Carrano's death (in Portuguese)]