Cabezas cortadas

Spain was the first station of Glauber Rocha’s voluntary exile from Brazil, which ended a few futile days before his too-early demise at the age of 42, caused by a life devoted to the gods of deliria. Away from his native soil and inspiration, Glauber’s cinema turned even more allegorical, metaphorical and metaphysical, as witnessed by Cutting Heads.
While the social condition in this film’s Erewhon - a world of evil kings, worse underlings, subjugated indigenous masses and messianic hopes - is still rooted in the Brazilian experience, the way he presents it is far more abstract: an aesthetic of naked absolutes, explosive and sublime, cruel and garish, that owes as much to the ephemeral pleasures of Pop as it does to the ancient rules and wisdom of Greek theatre. As a vision of fascism at its most basic and barbaric, Cutting Heads has lost none of its angry force, its ability to annoy and disturb and maybe even enrage, its beauty of sheer excess, its urgency.