Two very under-the-radar historical dramas (both centering around ideological and ethnic clashes) that I probably would have never watched if they weren’t both on Netflix…The question is: should you?
Xingu…A film about the Villas-Boas brothers who encountered Xingu Indians in central Brazil during 1943 and then worked to protect them from “development” by outside government and business interests that wanted their land. It’s theme is the debate between progress and eliminating indigenous people (first the Xingus start dropping from disease, then are “encouraged” to relocate), and even though it feels a little abstract in certain spots—the film needed a stronger sense of plotting and less scenes of moody dislocation—I think it’s worthy of a look, illuminating a part of history I knew nothing about beforehand. Grade: B-
No God, No Master…David Strathairn gets a too-rare leading role in this drama based on the anarchist-connected bombs of 1919, when a series of packages were sent to prominent businessmen. The film’s plotting is slow-footed and the filmmaking a little amateurish in spots (especially during some unintentionally funny scenes towards the end), but it does a good job of explaining a part of history many aren’t familiar with, and how an honest hunt for terrorists can so easily slip-slide into xenophobia or getting rid of the politically inconvenient. Among the examples: a very young J. Edgar Hoover was one of the government honchos whose solution to the bombings was to try to deport thousands of Italian immigrants, many of whom were guilty of nothing but having Italian heritage or “an unAmerican ideology.”