“”, biopic of the former president, presents itself as a fiction based on real events. However, on Tuesday (19) it suggests, in several scenes, that the feature film directed by adhered to conspiracy theories about real episodes.
In just over two minutes, Bolsonaro, played by actor Jim Caviezel, is portrayed as a Hollywood hero, fighting a battle against the system, in the 2018 campaign. The images of Bolsonaro alternate with those of a group of mercenaries, commanded by the then candidate’s opponents.
Esai Morales, who starred in the “Mission: Impossible” saga, plays one of the bosses, shown in a brief scene in the trailer. Scheduled for release in the second half of the year, the film is entirely spoken in English, with actors imitating the accents of Latinos living in the United States. Adélio Bispo de Oliveira, , is renamed Aurélio Barba, played by José Trassi. The stabbing scene is the climax of the trailer.
Initially, the trailer was published on the networks by the senator (-RJ). A pre-candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, he charged money from the banker, from the Master, to finance “Dark Horse”. Next, the report analyzes five points of the widespread narrative and how they can be departing from reality.
‘Who are they? You?’
Right at the beginning of the trailer, a reporter approaches the then candidate, asking for statements about the military’s possible return to his government. “They say you will restore the dictatorship”, says the journalist, to which the character responds harshly. “They, them, them, them. Who are they? You?” The “they” here performs the syntactic function of an indeterminate subject and, semantically, introduces two questions present in the film.
Firstly, by hiding who his critics would be, he introduces the conspiratorial tone of the trailer, which insinuates a war between Bolsonaro, the film’s hero, and his political opponents.
Secondly, it seeks to detach itself from the apology for the military dictatorship made by the former president throughout his public life. In 2016, Bolsonaro offered his vote to the memory of Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, one of the main torturers of the military regime.
Last year, Bolsonaro was sentenced by the (Supreme Federal Court) to 27 years and 3 months in prison for an attempted coup d’état.
‘My allies want him dead’
Judging by the trailer, the script for “Dark Horse” imagines a group of mercenaries, led by the opposing party, who try to kill Bolsonaro. “My allies want him dead,” says one of the men in charge, played by Esai Morales.
The reality, however, is quite different. Two years ago, when he stabbed Bolsonaro, at a campaign event, in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais.
In 2019, the PF considered Adélio unaccountable, because psychiatric reports registered him with persistent delusional disorder. Adélio is imprisoned at the Federal Penitentiary of Campo Grande (MS) and, two years ago, his transfer to a psychiatric hospital was suspended.
The former president encouraged the narrative that the left ordered him to be killed, taking advantage of the fact that .
‘The party in power, they are behind this’
In a darkened scene, some police officers discuss the stabbing case and one of them blurts out: “The party in power, they are behind this.” The phrasal construction, with the syntactic break, brings the “they” back, along with the conspiratorial tone.
The PF concluded, after all, that the attack was not orchestrated by a political group.
In any case, by attributing the attack to the party in power, insinuating PT’s participation in the case, the script runs into another inconsistency: the party that was in power at the time of the stabbing was that of the former president, who maintained a good relationship with Bolsonaro.
In 2021, from the STF (Supreme Federal Court) and helped the then president write a note of retreat after an attack on the Powers.
‘And faced the system’
During the trailer, some messages are used to introduce the main character, treated as an anti-system politician. “He was the voice of the people. And he stood up to the system. The system that feared him.”
Bolsonaro, however, during his career, was a deputy from the so-called centrão, an informal bloc in Congress known for its physiologism and far from ideological convictions.
Until reaching the PL, in 2021, Bolsonaro went through eight parties. He remained at , from 2005 to 2016, 11 years in total.
“I’m from the center”, he said, when asked about his choice by the senator (PP) to be minister of the Civil House. Ciro is investigated in the .
‘From foreign environmentalists to pedophiles’
In one of the most conspiratorial scenes in the trailer, Bolsonaro appears speaking in the middle of a crowd and elects two enemies for Brazil: “From foreign environmentalists to Hollywood pedophiles, this country is not theirs. It is ours.”
The “they” of past scenes now become “foreign environmentalists” and “Hollywood pedophiles.” There is no indication that these two groups have threatened national sovereignty.
It is true, however, that environmentalists criticized the policy of the then Minister of the Environment Ricardo Salles, now a federal deputy, who, at a meeting of the Bolsonaro government in 2020, defended “passing the herd”, a reference to the relaxation of deforestation rules.
According to Inpe (National Institute for Special Research), there is a 60% increase in deforestation in the Amazon.
Culture was another target of the former president, who demonized, in a speech, the incentive laws, criminalizing the artists who used them. He refused to honor central figures of Brazilian culture who died, as happened, in 2019, with , the father of bossa nova. He limited himself to saying: “He was a well-known person. Our condolences go out to the family, okay?”
