A Dog's Will
2000 · Guel Arraes
The lively João Grilo and the sly Chicó are poor guys living in the hinterland who cheat a bunch of people in a small town in Northeastern Brazil. When they die, they have to be judged by Christ, the Devil and the Virgin Mary before they are admitted to paradise.
dir. Guel Arraes · 2000
Brazil's most beloved comedy began as Ariano Suassuna's 1955 play, a cornerstone of Northeastern letters that folded medieval morality drama into the cordel ballad tradition of the sertão. Guel Arraes filmed it first as a four-part Globo television series, then carved this leaner theatrical cut, and the compression only sharpened its velocity. Matheus Nachtergaele's João Grilo, a scrawny trickster running on pure verbal invention, and Selton Mello's Chicó, a coward with a tall tale for every occasion, con their way through a dusty town — priest, baron, bandit — until the swindles catch up with them and the film swerves into its famous celestial tribunal, where the poor finally get an advocate. The mixture is singular: commedia dell'arte farce, backlands Catholicism, and a class consciousness worn as lightly as a straw hat. In Brazil its dialogue functions as shared scripture, quoted across generations; Suassuna, founder of the Armorial movement, lived to see his play become national folklore twice over.
Lines of influence
- Black God, White Devil (1964) — Structures the sertão as a mythic space narrated by a blind cordel balladeer, establishing the cordel-de-feira sung-verse mode of storytelling that A Dog's Will's João Grilo inherits.
- O Pagador de Promessas (1962) — Stages Northeastern popular piety as a public trial of faith on the church steps, supplying the folk-Catholicism-versus-clergy confrontation that drives the film's morality-play conflict.
- Macunaíma (1969) — Builds an episodic, carnivalesque picaresque around a shapeshifting trickster anti-hero, the malandro-folk-tale template João Grilo's cons directly extend.
- The Seventh Seal (1957) — Personifies Death and dramatizes a mortal arguing his case before a supernatural power, the medieval morality-play allegory that prefigures the celestial-tribunal climax.
- A Matter of Life and Death (1946) — Invents the staged heavenly-court device in which a bureaucratic tribunal literally adjudicates a mortal's fate, the exact framing of the film's final judgment scene.
- The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) — Renders the sacred as popular, non-clerical folk realism among the rural poor, the plainspoken peasant-Catholic register that lets Christ and the Virgin appear without pomp.
- La Strada (1954) — Draws its leads straight from commedia dell'arte street-performer masks (the Fool, the brute), the same stock-type physical comedy grammar animating the two-conman duo.
- Il Bidone (1955) — Follows petty swindlers who disguise themselves as clergy and face a final divine reckoning, the con-artist-meets-judgment moral arc mirrored in João Grilo's fate.
- Ahí está el detalle (1940) — Turns Cantinflas's verbal quick-wittedness into a courtroom farce where the picaro talks his way out of a tribunal, the trickster-in-the-dock craft João Grilo's celestial trial reprises.
- Lisbela e o Prisioneiro (2003) — Arraes again compresses a TV microsérie of Northeastern popular theater (Osman Lins) into farce with Selton Mello, extending the same cordel-comedy method and television-origin editing.
- Caramuru: A Invenção do Brasil (2001) — Reworks another Globo microsérie into a farcical armorial-flavored national origin tale, repeating the multi-episode-to-feature compression technique that shaped A Dog's Will.
- City of God (2002) — Retomada-era feature built from TV/commercial kinetic editing and an ensemble of non-pro and stage actors including Matheus Nachtergaele, sharing the compressed televisual cutting energy.
- Central Station (1998) — Contemporary Retomada road film crossing the sertão toward a folk-Catholic pilgrimage, reviving the backlands spiritual landscape A Dog's Will inhabits.
- Me You Them (2000) — Same-year sertão comedy of manners steeped in cordel-inflected Northeastern folk texture, an adjacent take on backlands vernacular humor.
- Deus é Brasileiro (2003) — Sends God himself wandering the Northeastern backlands in search of a saint, a folk-Catholic comic allegory that plays the same earthly-celestial interplay for laughs.
- Defending Your Life (1991) — Comic afterlife courtroom where the recently dead must argue their own worth, an independent instance of the celestial-tribunal-as-comedy device that structures the finale.