VIFF Review: Everything Blue: The Color of Music

Everything Blue: The Color of Music [EVERY] opens in the pre-dawn twilight on the waters of Salvador de Bahia's harbour. Out of the darkness an unearthly beautiful note soars through the air. The figure of the singer is silhouetted against the brightening sky. This is the dramatic introduction of Virginia Rodrigues who could be Jessye Norman's long lost Brazilian niece. With the voice of an opera singer she has risen out of poverty and become one of Brazil's foremost voices on music and social justice.

We are are also introduced to Mae, a former prostitute now in her 80's. "Black Mother" as she is called runs a house in a Salvador favela which takes in homeless children. In addition to giving her kids a roof and food she gives them hope and purpose by involving them in her "Black Mother's Band".

Rodrigues, Mae, and her kids are the face of the Black experience in Brazil. The descendants of the African slaves brought here to work the land are still very much at the bottom of the social order. But through all the hardship they have managed to retain their culture and thereby made an enormous contribution to Brazilian culture. By disguising their worship of the old animistic religion Candomble within the Catholic worship they kept their original faith. The spiritual and folk songs which survived are distinctly African sounding and represent the purest legacy of their African heritage.

From Salvador we fly to Rio de Janeiro where the African songs were transformed into samba. We meet the Old Guard of the Laporta Samba School. They are the most senior members of the school who preserve its traditions and pass it on to the younger members. They are totally dedicated to the school--some of them have even forsaken marriage and children. From them we learn the origin of the film title: Everything Blue is the title of a samba which translates to "everything OK" and sums up their whole attitude towards life's hardships.

Hardship follows even this music most identified with Brazil. At one point samba was officially banned. Raids were conducted where concerts were played and musicians' instruments were confiscated by the police. Samba was the music of the favelas, of the disreputable segments of society and had to be repressed. Unfortunately the film only mentions this in passing. It would have been interesting to learn more about this suppression of samba.

An interesting inclusion is the female impersonator Rogeria. S/he is a force of nature outlandish, camp and steals the scenes s/he's in. S/he appears to be a popular figure so it's hard to determine from the film what the real attitudes towards non-heterosexuals are in Brazilian society.

The film concludes at the famous Sambadromo where the Carnival samba competition is held. Spectacular hardly begins to describe the scene. A huge float with a gigantic animatronic eagle holding a perch with a dancer is lead by a procession of dancers in impossibly colorful, feathered, sequined, and outlandish costumes all moving to that irresistible samba beat. And that's just first of many in this intensely creative and passionate competition.

We get to see the end of the show where the floats are disassembled and the dancers disperse. Rogeria appears to congratulate the performers and laments on the end of Carnival: where for a brief time the poorest of Rio's inhabitants can imagine themselves as someone else in fantastic circumstances.

I got lucky again, the film director Jesse Acevedo was in the audience and we had a Q&A session.