Certainly one of the best films from Cinema Novo movement, Maurice Capovilla's metalinguistic work brings José Mojica Marins (the famous Coffin Joe) to star as fakir Alikham, sided by iconic actors from Nelson Pereira dos Santos and Glauber Rocha's movies Joffre Soares and Maurício do Valle. With a beautiful harsh black and white cinematography and an amazing heterogeneous music score, the films is devided in small segments split in three great parts. The best one is the first of them, portraying hunger in the freak show circus, which reaches each time more bizarre levels in order to attract the sadistic public. The perfect metaphor is the performamce in which Alikham eats nails and razors. The rest of the film is not as good, but is still interesting and does not damage the general outcome. In the middle, there is a brief musical part, with a folk singer narrating a critical plot twist. Then, Alikham goes to the road, in order to find more spectators, but eventually becomes seen as a mystic preacher. Afterwards, he tries to become a hunger entrepeneur, starving on a bed of nails for living, going from yown to town in a bus where it is written "Panis et circenses".
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