The casting of William Hurt

I'm Brazilian, I'm an actor, I was 30 at the time, and like most of my colleagues who speak English, I applied for the movie, hoping to get one of the several bit parts that were going to be cast in Brazil. I didn't. But I remember hearing that William Hurt had offered his services and was immediately accepted when, just before filming was scheduled to begin, Burt Lancaster, who was going to play Molina, suffered a massive heart attack.

Please don't take this as an unfriendly remark. I would hate to cause that impression. But the fact is that practically everybody all over the world makes the same mistake: people imagine that there is a typical Brazilian type, and it's always very "Latin." Until relatively recently, Brazil was open to immigrants from several parts of Europe, so that there are hordes of Brazilians (especially in the south, where the climate is cooler) who look German, Polish, Scandinavian (there's a huge Finnish colony in the south), Russian, Dutch, etc etc.

I'm Brazilian myself, and I look somewhat European (blond hair, blue eyes, the works). When the film was released in Brazil, nobody thought William Hurt looked implausible as a Brazilian. Those who had read the book, thought he looked too young (some critics even made an issue of that). But nobody thought he couldn't be Brazilian. And everybody agreed he was coming up with one of the greatest performances by an actor in a leading role in a very long time.

The wind is with us.

The movie was shot in Brazil but is not set in Brazil; the novel is Argentine for starters. The movie is located in a universal space, wherever political repression exists and political prisoners are tortured. It could be in Brazil, in Argentina, in China, in the USA, in France... it doesn't matter. If you can't appreciate this movie as a parable I think you won't enjoy it at all.

This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.

I don’t have an issue with the background of the character. William Hurt played well what was in front of him. Burt Lancaster, on the other hand, clearly had an unyielding vision of the novel as a melodrama. He was delusional; He should have simply deferred to the experts in their respective fields.