Mark Reviews Movies: SÓCRATES

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 8, 2019

There a many things to admire about Sócrates, from its realistic portrayal of trying to survive day to day as a poor kid in São Paulo, to its understanding that such a life doesn't make room for grief, to its straightforwardness about sexuality, and to its narrative and formal simplicity. It's an exercise in realism, founded upon the idea of simply following a character as he barely scrapes by, while facing assorted convincing and potentially devastating challenges along the way.

Most admirable, though, is that the movie, co-written and directed by Alexandre Moratto, was made on a limited budget by a group of teenagers and young adults—all of them from low-income backgrounds—from the Querô Institute in Brazil. The opening text is devoted to that fact of the movie's creation, and the existence of the movie is a testament to the organization's work.

As for the movie itself, it feels sincere in its depiction of the hardships of Sócrates (newcomer Christian Malheiros, in an impressively internalized performance), even as the story seems engineered to pile misery upon misery upon him. It begins with the 15-year-old boy discovering that his mother has died in her sleep. From there, his terrible situation never relents.

Moratto and co-writer Thayná Mantesso have a lot to say over the movie's 70-minute length. Sócrates struggles to find a job, to deal with a new romantic relationship with Maicon (Tales Ordakji), to retrieve his mother's cremated remains, and to confront the sudden re-appearance of his father (played by Jyme Rodrigues), a fanatically religious man whom the mother left when it became clear that he wouldn't accept the fact that their son is gay. All the while, the landlady at his apartment threatens to evict him if the rent doesn't get to her soon.

All of these threads, while revealing much about the boy's situation, never fully come together or reveal much more about Sócrates, beyond his troubled and troublesome situation. As a slice of life, Sócrates reveals the trials of living as an impoverished youth in São Paulo and elsewhere (experiences and places that the young crew who made the movie likely know firsthand). It's authentic, for sure, but as a story about a character juggling grief and poverty and uncertainty, the movie feels as if it's just scratching the surface of its possibilities.

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