Let’s face it, Brazilian cinema didn’t pay much attention to the increasingly robust evangelical train.
Religious plots have been good at crowding movie theaters, like the spiritualist “Nosso Lar” with 4 million viewers in 2010 and the catholic “Maria” with 2.3 million 20 years ago. And the super productions aimed at believers? Nobody knows, nobody saw it.
The game began to change when the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God used their machine to create titles like 2016’s The Ten Commandments and Bishop Edir Macedo’s biographies, Nothing to Lose, with volumes one and two.
But these films were whitewashed like a bleach ad. “Nas Ondas da Fé”, a film that Marcelo Adnet idealized in 2014 and which starts this Thursday, does not suffer from this evil.
Hickson, played by Adnet, is the typical Brazilian. Computer technicians work odd jobs, do what they can and dream of advancement. He is also a subject of faith. A really nice guy who helps old ladies fix computer crashes without charging them.
Jéssika, played by Letícia Lima, had the idea of introducing the boy to an apostle from the evangelical temple, whom the couple is visiting to see if he could get a job on church radio for her husband. Fate takes a turn for the worse, and Hickson, who dreams of being an announcer, accidentally goes on the airwaves pretending to be a pastor. A shepherd, by the way, with some traits of the troupe inspired by Edir Macedo.
He does better than the Order, and that same evening, listeners flock in droves, eager to make gifts to the church, ecstatic as Pastor Hickson preaches a title he actually earns in the end after the church’s bigwig revealed his potential discovered bringing money into the house.
“Nas Ondas da Fé” does not fail to surf the waves of the audience. Evangelicals could be the largest religious segment in the country in a few years, and the audiovisual sector has done very little to give this audience the respect it deserves. will you go now Globo, which has made several nods to the group over the past decade, this month premiered Vai na Fé, its first soap opera with a believer protagonist.
Of course, the film clashes with stereotypes that populate the progressive imagination, such as pastors who are more interested in the miracle of multiplying their bank accounts than in the salvation of believers.
There’s the leader making storms with bundles of tithing money and the commercialization of relationships in the church, such as the idea of starting some sort of miles club so brothers can pay more to have access to privileges like frontrow seats of the temple, just like a “diamond customer”.
But that’s fine, because it would also be a factual error to present this complex web of beliefs as a den of altruism. Apparently many people in the churches think too much about buffoons and that the seven deadly sins have a place there as well as in every other microcosm of society from the lustful believer to the envious apostle.
A believer who is a believer knows this, they just don’t like it when smartasses outside of religion distill a narrow view of their group.
The problem would be reducing the evangelicals to a ruthless bunch who exploit poor people without any autonomy. The work escapes this trap with some dignity. Full of faith and wickedness, the protagonist couple is part of a suburban middle class who do their best to conquer in life what comes to the table of an intellectual elite who snubs their evangelical faith.
One scene sums up this sense of bewilderment well — Hickson and Jéssika’s first visit to a fancy restaurant, not knowing how to react to a tuna milkshake that’s being touted as the eighth wonder of modern gastronomy.
With dramatic touches and directed by a comedy director (Felipe Joffily, from “Muita Calma Nessa Hora” and “E Aí… Comou?”), the title has the merit of delving into a universe still little known outside the evangelical bubble is.
Are you accused of not having a place to talk? Go. The portal Pleno News, for example, put it in a nutshell when looking at the trailer that “Adnet’s new film mocks the faith of evangelicals”.
Looking at the material as a whole, I suspect that one leaves the theater feeling like laughing with the evangelicals and not just laughing at them, as has happened for so long. Walk in faith.