By Jeff Hartke, August 24, 2007

Class warfare in Brazil - in its full-blooded rich vs. poor vs. middle-class Marxist sense - is the subject of the documentary film Manda Bala (MANDA). Filmmaker Jason Kohn uses a series of fascinating interviews to sketch out the tensions and conflict in Brazilian society and the violence that is too often the result. When focused on the personal lives of its subjects the film is very rewarding, but it mostly fails to connect them into a single convincing theme.

A good documentary brings us into the lives of people we might otherwise never encounter, and Manda Bala certainly does that. During the course of the film we meet a variety of interesting folks - rich men driving armored cars out of fear of street violence, the murderous - yet strangely compassionate - leader of a kidnapping ring, a victim who had her ears ripped off and a host of government officials both honest and corrupt.

Their stories are vivid and very unlike the lives of most Americans, and thus are the most compelling reasons to view the film. I found the personality sketch of a plastic surgeon that specializes in restoring the ears of kidnap victims moving. Here is a man who "does well by doing good" - he pioneered a new method and became very wealthy as a result. Still, the very fact that there are people in need of his services says an awful lot about Brazilian society.

The scenes of the film that focus on the individuals and their stories deliver the most dramatic punch. The attempt to stitch them together into a single theme less so. Part of the problem is that the primary argument made - that the corruption and avarice of the rich leads inevitably to violence on the part of the poor - is too large to be contained in 85 minutes. An extended analogy revolving around a frog farm is a clever conceit, but the big issues never truly come into focus.

Kohn commits many journalistic errors which distract from his message. None of his subjects are able or willing to hang a number on the degree of corruption, so he blandly hangs a caption claiming that $2 billion was embezzled. That's a big number worth talking about but what kind of impact would that have on development of the impoverished northern regions of Brazil? The filmmakers imply that without this corruption many of the social ills they document would be better, but I have to wonder. The city of Los Angeles has an annual budget of $21.8 billion - is 10% of that number all that is needed for Brazil's poor to reach self-sufficiency?

A less understandable irritant is the substandard audio package. The microphone level of the interviewer is often low and scratchy and the voice track sometimes overwhelmed by the background music. More post-production work would have improved the experience considerably.

Manda Bala is currently in limited release.