Notícias de uma guerra particular

In this documentary about the drug war in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, a police officer sighs: ‘When a policeman kills a drug dealer, the dealers kill a cop, et cetera. That’s how personal this war has become. There’s no end to it. I can’t see a way out.’ What was once a war that still showed some logic of interests has now become a chaotic and permanent carnage. The director nevertheless tries to get some hold on the madness. His film is compiled of short chapters titled ‘the guns’, ‘the dealers’, ‘the law enforcement’ and ‘chaos’. The images that Salles managed to capture are often perplexing. A wild shootout. A huge police warehouse, packed with confiscated weapons. Naked boys in a juvenile prison, forced to show that they have not hidden any drugs in or on their bodies. Salles’ sketchy structure suggests that the drug war is hard to grasp. People say the obvious and profusely use commonplaces. ‘In an unjust society, the police are simply unjust too, so the injustice will probably last forever.’ Or: ‘Everyone wants to make money fast and has to survive.’ The only certainty in Rio is that the killing will continue. The director illustrates this in his final shot: a white image fills with epitaphs of victims, printed next to and over each other, until the entire screen, from left to right and top to bottom, has turned completely black.