This dramatization of the celebrated Brazilian
writer Paulo Coelho’s life, leaves much to be desired. Paulo
Coelho’s Best Story is related in bits and pieces, jumping around in time,
which seems to be a fad nowadays.
I would like to hear the director’s (Daniel Augusto) rationale for
presenting such a complicated story in this manner. I will write this review in chronological order to make it
easier for the reader.
Coelho is the son of a very successful
businessman, Pedro Souza (Diaz), who early on took a dim view of his son’s
aspirations to become a writer, along with his mother (Nascimento), and a
psychiatrist. Their response was,
“Do you think anyone will want to
read what you write?” Throughout his
adolescence and early adulthood, Paulo is in major conflicts with his
father. His parents try
restrictions as a means of controlling his behavior and depriving him of financial
support so he will get a paying job.
But he is rebellious, and gets involved in drugs and heavy
drinking. He has two psychiatric
hospitalizations in which he is given shock treatments, but he escapes the
second time, and eventually ends up living with his grandparents.
In the 1970’s as a young adult, Paulo is
writing seriously. He lives with
Luiza (Vega), who clearly loves him, but is skeptical of his claim that he can
move an ashtray just with the power of his mind. He starts a magazine under the nom de plume of Augusto
Figueiredo, writing articles such as “Telepathy”, when a musician named Raul
Seixes comes looking for him and wants him to be a record label executive. He accepts, they become friends and
partners, and Paulo starts writing music for Raul to sing. His relationship with Luiza ends when
he gets into the rock scene and writes songs with the sentiment that a man has
the right to say and do what he wants.
Luiza sees him with another woman and leaves him. Subsequently, he finds that Raul is
moving to New York, and claiming authorship of Paulo’s songs.
In the 1980’s, Paulo has married a woman named
Chris, and this marriage will last more than 30 years. She encourages him, and voices her
frustration about his drinking, about being a music executive rather than a
composer. She urges him to start
writing again and not give up on himself.
To help with that she talks him into going to Amsterdam and become part
of a mystical order that will help him understand the symbolic language of the
world and keep him on the path toward his destiny. It is after this that Paulo writes his most well known book,
The Alchemist, with the message,
“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve
it.”
Despite the many obstacles he has encountered,
Coelho, who is still alive, has been amazingly prolific, with over 30 novels
published (165 million copies sold and translated into 80 languages), the most
famous being The Alchemist, which has
been on the New York Times best seller list ever since it was published in
1988.
As noted, a major drawback of the film is its
disjointedness. Coelho’s life is
presented in decades, but the story jumps around and you might see him as a
white-haired man hiking in the mountains, and then suddenly he’s a rebellious
teenager. Characters new to the
story are shown without explanation, and you have to figure out later who they
are. For example after showing
something of his teenage years in the beginning of the film, we then see an
older man recovering from a heart attack and wanting to leave the hospital,
with a woman saying, “no”, he is not strong enough. It turns out that the man is Coelho and she is his wife of
many years. Similarly, many of
Coelho’s pithy observations and thoughts are sprinkled throughout the story
without necessarily giving us much of a context. All of this works to actually hide the real essence of this
man who is obviously spiritual, creative, and committed to his calling.
A film that jerks back and forth
through time with little exploration into the make-up of the great author Paulo
Coelho came to be.
Grade: D By
Donna R. Copeland
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