“Orestes”: a laboratory of Brazil as tragedy

Um laboratório do Brasil como tragédia

Abstract

Among the series of procedures employed in the intricate documentary Orestes (2015) to deal with the legacy of extermination of marginalized populations that the civil-military dictatorship left in contemporary Brazil, the dialogue plotted with the Oresteia trilogy stands out, of Aeschylus. This article investigates continuities and discontinuities between the two works, so distant in space and time, in an attempt to assess how the historical difficulty of establishing justice and democracy in our country can be thought of from the perspective of tragedy, and the ways in which the film Orestes is confronted with this perspective. On the one hand, the film is an expression of a secular effort to strengthen democratic values and institutions. On the other hand, it observes a world in which the archaic impulse of revenge can never be completely detached from the civilizing movement itself.