Bacurau is in trouble. First, the small 

Brazilian town, somewhere near São Paulo, 

has its water cut off. Then it loses cell 

service and disappears from satellite maps. 

Later, its electricity cuts out. Its residents 

soon realize that this is no accident. Their 

village is under siege. 

“Bacurau,” directed by Juliano Dornelles 

(“O Ateliê da Rua do Brum”) and Kleber 

Mendonça Filho (“Aquarius”), is a wild 

piece of pulp cinema. Yet, deep down, it’s 

also a scathing critique of imperialism in its 

many forms. “Bacurau” is satire on the edge 

of a knife, political commentary delivered 

by storms of machine gunfire and written in 

blood. It’s one of 2020’s most entertaining 

movies yet. 

Bárbara Colen’s (“Outer Edge”) Teresa 

comes back to Bacurau for her grandmother’s 

funeral. The town is a single dusty street 

and most of its buildings are run down. The 

church has become storage space and their 

single tourist attraction — a museum about 

Bacurau’s history — is rarely visited. 

Yet its inhabitants care deeply about one 

another, which the movie takes great care 

to emphasize early on. They gather for the 

grandmother’s funeral and sing in unison 

as they carry her to the grave. They share 

food and medicine and work together to get 

water when it’s cut off by the powers that 

be. The denizens of the town are diverse and 

individually characterized, of many races, 

sexual orientations and gender identities. 

A highlight is Sonia Braga’s (“Wonder”) 

Dominga, the town doctor who gets some of 

the film’s funniest lines. 

The first act, while mostly tranquil, 

is so well written and performed that it 

could have lasted the rest of the movie. Yet 

danger soon comes to Bacurau. A gang of 

white mercenaries, led by Udo Kier (“Iron 

Sky”), wants to kill everyone in the town. 

Their motivations are unclear for most of 

the movie’s runtime — all one knows is 

that they’re immature psychopaths who 

only value white lives and love guns to the 

point of fetishization. Yet in most American 

movies they’d be the heroes.

Hollywood and xenophobia have always 

gone hand in hand. There are countless 

movies where white people go to an 

“uncivilized” place and encounter people of 

color who want to kill, eat or sacrifice them. 

This is no 20th century trend, either. “The 

Green Inferno” in 2013 had white students 

go try and save the Brazillian rainforest 

only to be eaten by native people. In 2015, 

perhaps even more heinously, “No Escape” 

Owen Wilson and Pierce Brosnan are chased 

around Thailand by crowds of gun-toting, 

crazed Southeast Asian people. Mainstream 

American films love placing white people 

in fictionally hostile cultures and showing 

their fight to escape, as if that was all other 

countries were good for.

This cliché isn’t just isolated to movies, 

either. Isn’t the Christopher Columbus 

most elementary schoolers learn about just 

a white man who extinguishes a culture 

deemed dangerous and inferior? Lewis and 

Clark are also iconic American pioneers, but 

didn’t they also help open the floodgates 

for imperialistic expansion? It doesn’t 

matter if the narrative is cinematic or 

historical. If a white American is in control, 

it usually follows a pattern: violent, white 

protagonists steamroll the “uncivilized” 

lands they encounter. 

The white cinematic mainstream haunts 

“Bacurau.” The mercenaries carry iconic 

American weapons like the Thompson 

Machine Gun and Colt Revolver and speak 

in earpieces like something out of “Mission 

Impossible.” They even take over the 

narrative for much of the third act, changing 

the film’s language from Portuguese to 

English and showing just how damaging 

Hollywood’s whitewashing can be, literally 

silencing the voices of an entire population. 

The townspeople of Bacurau are replaced 

by disgusting, childish villains straight out 

of a B-movie, and they are missed in each 

Americanized frame. 

Yet, unlike in many Hollywood movies, 

the clichés are broken. The townspeople 

work together to fight back in a stellar, no 

holds barred finale. Its flurry of bullets, 

blood and brains is not just a perfectly 

crafted gore show, but also a triumph over 

harmful stereotypes and the reclaiming of 

a narrative. People who aren’t Americans 

have histories, personalities and value, and 

sometimes the white man with the gun isn’t 

the hero. It’s high time America caught on 

to that. 

Monday, April 6, 2020 — 5
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

MUBI

ANDREW WARRICK

Daily Arts Writer

White cinematic mainstream haunts Brazilian ‘Bacurau’

FILM REVIEW

My biceps started to ache as I rapidly whisked 

the sad, watery coffee-ground mixture with the 

manic fervor of a small child. Eyebrows furrowed 

and lips pressed together in a stubborn line, I 

was the poster image for culinary determination. 

It had been about 15 minutes since I first set my 

whisk to the coffee mixture, and I was not about 

to give up on the task at hand. The coffee would 

be whipped; it would be whipped and fluffy and 

a perfect caramel-brown color when I was done 

with it. 

Just 
one 
week 

prior, all of my classes 

had been moved to 

dinky online formats. 

And all my friends 

and I were sent back 

to the hometowns 

we had once been 

so eager to move 

away from. In one 

weekend, my dorm 

became empty and 

my inbox became full 

of canceled events I 

once looked forward 

to. Over a couple 

email 
exchanges, 

I went from having two work-study positions 

to having zero. Club meetings were canceled 

indefinitely and promising summer prospects lost 

their promise.

But, in that moment, it was just me, my whisk 

and my stupid coffee recipe that I found on 

TikTok. I was in control. No virus was going 

to stop me from turning a TikTok dream into 

a deliciously whipped, coffee-lover’s reality. I 

whisked and I whisked and I whisked.

But it just wasn’t whipping. The gritty, brown 

mixture stayed that way and there were no 

fluffiness or caramel hues in sight. I was infuriated, 

cursing under my breath like some sort of 

deranged cooking show competitor. The pressure 

was on, and the clock was ticking, as if I didn’t have 

an infinite amount of time in self-quarantine to 

whisk this stupid drink. Successfully making this 

iced coffee was my first concrete task after what 

seemed like weeks of floating around, scratching 

off events from my calendar and forcing myself to 

find contentment in days of newly-freed time. 

But I wasn’t finished yet — I whisked nobly 

onward. 
In 
an 

attempt to ease the 

physically 
taxing 

nature of my work, I 

started switching off 

my whisking hands, 

my breathing getting 

heavier with every 

passing 
minute. 
I 

adopted yet another 

strategy: tilting the 

metal 
bowl 
from 

one side to the other, 

searching 
for 
the 

perfect 
angle 
that 

would 
yield 
the 

creamy 
concoction 

TikTok had promised. Brown bubbles forming 

on the edges of the soupy mixture started to tease 

me in my culinary pursuit. I let out a few crazed 

shouts of pride as I looked down at what appeared 

to be the beginnings of a bubbly, thoroughly-

whipped beast. 

I think my mom could sense my increasing 

hysteria as she approached my mess of a chef’s 

station. Coffee grounds and sugar granules were 

peppered all over the white countertop like 

confetti. With bubbles forming then disappearing 

and coffee grounds sitting stubborn and rigid 

at the bottom of the bowl, I started to lose hope. 

I could’ve cried. It was a Friday afternoon and I 

should’ve been in Ann Arbor, in East Quad, basking 

in the excitement that is the start of the weekend 

and the promise of a night out with friends. 

Instead, I was back home in Indiana, staring at my 

icky, failed attempt at whipped happiness, with 

my mom leaning over my shoulder in concern. 

Her voice was full of pity. “You saw this on 

TikTok?” I looked down pathetically at the dirt-

like mixture and nodded.

“What kind of coffee does the recipe call for?” 

she asked.

“Instant coffee powder,” I muttered. 

I looked over at the crumbly Dunkin’ stuff I 

had just spent almost an hour trying to whisk 

into a creamy paste. The bright orange package 

read “medium roast coffee grounds.” I eyed the 

instant-coffee imposter with nervous suspicion. 

“Grace, that’s not instant coffee. Instant coffee 

is freeze-dried!” my mom exclaimed. She started 

to laugh, “That’s ground coffee!” 

I knew she was right but I didn’t want to believe 

it. The ground coffee was supposed to work and it 

was supposed to be fluffy, tasty goodness. And I 

was supposed to be in Michigan, with my classes 

and my friends and my a cappella rehearsals and 

club meetings and responsibilities. I was supposed 

to be at college.

I let out a defeated sigh as I started to clean up 

the goopy brown mess. 

Whipped coffee: 1.

COVID-19: 1.

Me: 0.

“There will be more recipes,” my mom added.

And she was right. There will be more recipes 

and there will be more semesters and more 

responsibilities. And when those times come, I 

might miss the Friday afternoon I spent whisking 

my heart away at something as unimportant and 

frivolous as whipped coffee. 

DIGITAL CULTURE NOTEBOOK
Whipped coffee versus COVID-19 (not a success story)

GRACE TUCKER

Daily Arts Writer

I let out a defeated sigh as 
I started to clean up the 

goopy brown mess.
Whipped coffee: 1.

COVID-19: 1.

Me: 0.

THE COOKING FOODIE

Bacurau 

Vitrine Filmes 

State Theatre Virtual Screenings

