AWAKENING OF THE BEAST
Dir. José Mojica Marins, 92 mins.
Brazil, 1969
Part of COFFIN JOE AND OTHER COFFINS
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 11 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 20 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22 – 10 PM
Perhaps Awakening of the Beast is considered Marin’s greatest film by many of his admirer’s because it is the first film made after the establishment of Zé do Caixão’s iconography in the Brazilian cultural lexicon. This familiarity allowed Marins to modulate Ze’s role in the horror films featuring the character starting with and following this film, accentuating the paranormal, dreamlike quality that was achieved once Zé became the demonic puppetmaster lurking in the subconscious, rather than the focus of the narrative, constantly seeking to assert his dominance.
Indeed, we do see constant reference to and manipulation of Marins’ image throughout Awakening of the Beast, as his visage appears both on TV as himself, and as Zé do Caixão across various media including comic books and a hallucinogenic-trip-inducing poster. This newfound recognition of the potential held for the proliferation of Zé’s image through contemporary mass media lead Marins to probe the countercultural issues of his day in Brazil, resulting in Awakening’s focus on recreational drug use, (Sadistic) sexual liberation, and the political repression carried out by the second, more severe military “coup within the coup” in the Brazilian government that occurred 1968.
Truly, Awakening of the Beast remains Marins’ most potent political film, as it juxtaposes its scenes of violent repression enacted by the dictatorship upon “subversives” against a panel of condescending psychiatric figures, rejecting both physical and institutional forms of coercive despotism. Featuring both a hellacious color sequence that rivals that of This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, and other figures from the “udigrudi” Brazilian cinematic movement (such as Ozualdo Candeias, Carlos Reichenbach, and Jairo Ferreira), the third film in the Coffin Joe saga remains a Brazilian countercultural milestone that deserves to be regarded as such.