JK (2006) User Reviews

As a rule, Brazil has politiqueiros rather than politicos. Hardly any statesman or stateswoman worthy of that name. Was JK among the exceptions?

[jgcorrea · 5/10 · 12 February 2006]

Juscelino Kubitschek was the Brazilian president from 1956 to 1961. 'Fifty years in five' was his motto and promise. He gave Brazil the Volkswagen, the Chevette and the Ford Corcel. He transferred the capital of the Republic from Rio de Janeiro to Brasília. He developed the country with power plants and other implements that unfortunately weren't quite cheap. The JK Administration was the real bridge between agricultural Brazil and industrial Brazil. Drive and determination were typical of his personality. Actually, along six whole decades, JK was the only Brazilian civil president to manage to fulfill his mandate. He survived a number of attempted coups, by way of counter-coups and lots of compromise. The Globo miniseries is a pop kind of diluted biopic that safely plays its focus on JK's love life, filling the screen with torrid, melodramatic soft-core sex, a few politically incorrect heavies, and why not, a little rags-to-riches screenplay demagogy. Apparently, the bottom line was to portray Mr. Kubitschek as the self-made forerunner of future incumbents, Presidents Fernando Henrique and Lula da Silva. According to the biopic, for instance, JK only got his first pair of shoes when he was 11. On the other hand, according to the playwrights, JK couldn't have been more politically correct. Indeed ? Personally I think the transfer of the capital only helped to integrate the States and consolidate the nation's federative principle in an arguable and, to say the least, untimely way. As to the Brazilian automotive industry, it now produces nearly 1.5 million cars per year, which, thrown onto the domestic market, jam the roads and create unemployment, in a paradoxical contradiction with JK's original Plan of Targets. Kubitschek did modernize Brazil, by developing her industrial park and creating a consistent middle class. But the demand for basic inputs and raw materials relied on the industrial expansion, which did not lure foreign capitals , had therefore to be funded by Brazil's own public money, that is to say, by inducing currency inflation, which plagued Brazil from the seventies through the nineties. Visually speaking, the approach seems to betray Globo's everlasting obsession with brown hues. The action is in the past, Globo seems to think, therefore the revival must be brownish. Consequently, everyone wears brown costumes against mostly tan sets and soft focus lenses. I definitely can't say the biopic has reached the memorable level of other period miniseries , like Primo Basilio or Nina, for instance.