Apocalypse in the Tropics: Timely Doc Charts How Religion Corrupted Brazilian Politics
By Liam Lacey
Rating: B+
O, Lord, your people beseech you. Give us a frigging break.
This week, Netflix is releasing worldwide the documentary Apocalypse in the Tropics, filmmaker Petra Costa’s reflective essay on Christian nationalism’s influence over the last chaotic decade of Brazilian politics.
On Wednesday, U.S. president, Donald Trump threatened Brazil with trade tariffs unless they drop the trial of former leader Jair Bolsanaro for his role in inciting the 2023 attempted coup, false claims of election fraud, and alleged assassination plans against his opponent and a Supreme Court judge.
In an era that feels like a return to Medieval times but with nuclear weapons, when we see corrupt politicians freely borrowing the language of ancient religious texts to justify violence, extremism has become numbingly familiar.
It is to Costa’s credit that she provides a soothing, reflective tone to the subject, both in her poetic voiceover and a hypnotically smooth editing that movies from drone shots of crowds, congregations, rallies, and protest marches to handheld closeups of politicians clawing their ways through teeming throngs of admirers.
Her film is a sequel to her Oscar-nominated The Edge of Democracy, released in 2019 in the wake of Bolsonaro’s election victory and while Brazil’s current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a.k.a. Lula was still in prison on trumped-up corruption charges. Apocalypse in the Tropics updates us on the Bolsonaro presidency, marked by the deaths of around 700,000 people, one of the world’s highest mortality rates.
Along with COVID denial, Bolsonaro marked all the spaces on right-wing bingo card: opposing Indigenous land claims, LGBT and abortion rights, and gun restriction. But Costa’s main theme is not about Bolsonaro, a figure of no charisma beyond some strutting arrogance, but on how evangelical religion in Brazil grew and translated into political power.
An estimated 30 percent of the Brazilian population identifies as evangelical Christians, up from five percent 40 years ago, a shift she calls one of the most dramatic in religious history. In her quest, Costa has considerable access to the players involved, including the former and current president, Lula of the centre-left Workers’ Party. Raised a Catholic, he agreed to uphold the anti-abortion laws, and places food insecurity as the country’s greatest problem.
His opposite in every way is the almost comically ill-tempered televangelist Silas Malafaia, who proudly brags about his talent as a political kingmaker and has his highest praise for the Jesus of John 2:15 who used a whip to drive the money changers and merchants from the temple.
Costa traces the rise of evangelism to the influence of the United States and that country’s Cold War concerns of the overlap between South America’s left-leaning Catholic “liberation theology” and socialism.
America’s most effective instrument was the evangelist Billy Graham, preaching his Christianity-vs-Marxism message, and drawing vast audiences in stadium tours in Brazil. The evangelical bloc grew, and politicians responded to their power.
In the 2018 presidential election, the outspoken Malafaia and his Assembly of God Pentecostal church propelled the former fringe politician Bolsonaro to the presidency, where Costa suggests he was often a virtual mouthpiece for Malafaia’s ideas. People began calling the president “messiah” — inspired by his middle name, Messias — as he was hailed as a protector against the dreaded ghost of Communism and the secular society.
There are a few soft spots in Costa’s approach, including a shortage of input from those true believers who voted for Bolsonaro. Also, Costa’s knowledge of religion is that of an outsider, though she says she tried to understand its draw by reading the New Testament. She divides her film into seven chapters, some with Biblical titles, intermittently illustrated with closeup shots of apocalyptic paintings by Bosch and Brueghel among others.
She saves the chapter called Revelations for the last, linking the Biblical book that envisions the destruction of the world and the second coming of Christ with the January 8 coup attack on Brazil’s federal buildings.
Footage of the rioters breaking windows, destroying statues, and even defecating on a desk, demonstrate acts that are “religious” only in the sense of desecrating an institution held as politically sacred. The echoes of the riot at the U.S. Capitol build two years before passes without commentary.
Apocalypse in the Tropics. Written and directed by Petra Costa. In theatres at Toronto’s Hot Docs Cinema July 12-13; at Vancouver’s VIFF Centre July 11-13, and on Netflix July 14.