Lula, sanitised

Once upon a time it was considered indecent to turn living people into myths, or even into films, with too much haste. The cycle seems to be shorter now. Gandhi had to wait until 34 years after his death before he appeared on cinema screens around the world. George Bush junior, by contrast, was the victim of an Oliver Stone biopic during the last year of his presidency. Now a Brazilian director, Fábio Barreto, has done the same for Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as he starts his final year of office.

“Lula, Son of Brazil” is the tale of a poor boy made good, his flaws left on the cutting table and his virtues in close-up. Since Lula hopes to secure the election of his chosen successor, Dilma Rousseff, in October, it is controversial. The film “promotes the worship of a political myth,” said Eugênio Bucci, a critic and journalism professor. Before it was even released Veja, a magazine, pointed out that many of the companies that funded its production (the most expensive in the history of Brazilian cinema) have either won or hope to win contracts from the government.

For all that, the film is very watchable. It opens in the poor north-east, where Lula was born into a landscape of bright red soil and cacti, and ends with his rise as a metalworkers’ union leader in the industrial belt of São Paulo in the 1970s. This is a candyfloss version of the story, however. Lula’s reverses are shown: the little finger lost to a lathe, the death of his first wife and child in childbirth. But he is too good to be true: a perfect student, perfect husband and political moderate who abhorred violence.

The book on which the film is based, by contrast, quotes Lula as approving of an incident in which a director of a factory that is on strike is thrown out of a window. In the film he runs from the factory appalled. That is a shame. A more nuanced telling would not detract from Lula’s remarkable life story and achievement.

The film is doing well at the box office. Its producers say it is running more strongly in the north-east than in the populous south-east, which means it mirrors Ms Rousseff’s fortunes in the polls. There are plans to show the film on mobile screens in places with no cinema. It may get an airing on television, though there is no such deal in place yet.

All this helps a process of mythmaking around Lula that is already well under way. Catching some of Lula’s stardust is Ms Rousseff’s best hope for capturing the presidency in October, and there are some signs that this is happening. The gap between her and José Serra, her main rival, halved between March and December last year and now stands at 14 points. Competing against a celluloid legend is not easy.