Debaixo de Fogo

Goldsmith's soundtrack to Under Fire is one of my all-time favorites, I know it by heart, and I was very curious about the film it was written for. I was therefore quite surprised how long it took after the opening credits for the music to start playing at all... Maybe half an hour, maybe more. Until then, the plot unfolded very slowly, at length, and not much of interest happened. But then the heroes got to the town of Leon, Goldsmith finally started winning, the film picked up momentum, and the atmosphere thickened and thickened. The ending was chilling and I would say quite realistic and with an idea that is unfortunately still relevant. There are simply no real heroes. And if you think so, you can bet there would be plenty of other people who would convince you otherwise. (31/12/2013)

“And for all the right reasons, your poets choose the wrong side.” A disillusioned insight into the underbelly of the "Third World" during the Cold War. On the one side a fascist dictator, on the other Marxist rebels, with the interests of the great powers in the background, while "wanna-be-neutral" journalists lose their illusions during a conflict that has only losers in the form of repeating history and human tragedies. Whenever it threatens to turn into sentimental agitprop or take an undisguised leftist stance (like Stone's very similar Salvador), it gets relativised and thrown into the grey zone. Raw, compelling, superbly acted and the only thing beautiful about it is Goldsmith's surprisingly dense soundtrack combining synths with South American flutes and motifs, which in logic shouldn’t work, but it does. (30/01/2021)

"You fall in love with the poets; the poets fall in love with the Marxists; the Marxists fall in love with themselves. The country falls in love with the rhetoric, and in the end, we are stuck with tyrants." This right-wing view of revolutionary events is not shared by Roger Spottiswoode's film, but to its credit, it doesn’t fully side with the other side either. As the film nears its conclusion, it unexpectedly turns into a functional combination of drama, war film, and romance, supported by Goldsmith’s focused ethnographic soundtrack, with his lips pressed to Pan’s flute. The centerpiece is Nick Nolte, who, with a subtle beer belly, the word "journalist" instead of a helmet, and so many cameras hanging off him, they serve as a bulletproof vest, tries to walk the tightrope of impartiality, but he knows well that the winds from both sides and Joanna Cassidy without a bra can’t be faced forever. It's as surprising to me as an Indian elephant in Chad, but this is one of his best roles. (07/10/2022)