The Mask of Civility: Petra Costa’s ‘The Edge of Democracy’

The effortless drama of reality is something narrative fiction can never genuinely capture. That was the conclusion I came to having watched copious amounts of film and television over the last year (thanks attributed to COVID-19).

And so, early on during the first lockdown, I came across Brazilian director Petra Costa and her Academy Award-nominated documentary feature, The Edge of Democracy. The film concentrates on the events that led to the election of right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 and seeks to expose factors that weakened the country’s democratic fabric. Originally intended to focus solely on the impeachment of former Workers’ Party president Dilma Rousseff, the film also covers the imprisonment of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, and embroiders an image of a Brazil that seems intent on deserting democracy and the rule of law.

And yet, although this a Brazilian film about Brazilian politics and Brazilian history, it translates well to a global audience because the themes and trends explored in it are so relevant to citizens in many democracies around the world. Ironically, I started writing this piece just hours before a violent mob of extremist Trump supporters stormed and ransacked Capitol Hill in Washington DC. Costa, herself, subsequently tweeted: “The Edge of Democracy, now in DC”. It should be clear that this film is a cautionary tale for the international community rather than a mere inspection of some off-beat, exclusively Brazilian national phenomenon.

The film achieves compelling face-to-face coverage with key figures in the crisis, including direct access to the likes of Rousseff, Lula and Bolsonaro. Indeed, the very first shots of the film, taken from inside the car driving Lula to prison, set the tone for what is to come. And it is this range of first-hand accounts, blended together, that provides such an effective foundation. Whilst this film is marked by the number of emotive political speeches, it is Costa’s interviews with anonymous Brazilian citizens that deliver some of the most poignant moments. For example, as Rousseff and her possessions are being moved out of the Presidential Palace, an anonymous cleaner captures the moment best, somewhat poetically admitting how easy it would be “if all that’s happened could be cleaned with a cloth and a bucket of water”.

The extraordinary access to the figures at the heart of the political drama reminded me of documentaries like Mitt, Weiner and Street Fight. However, Costa’s work differentiates itself by unashamedly complementing the political drama with her own family’s story. She alerts the audience herself to the context that gave her the perspective she has. Costa is no stranger to divulging the personal; her first feature film, Elena, is a deeply touching account about her sister, and is unusual for a documentary in the sense that it finds comfort in abstraction and subjectivity. Whilst this break with convention is striking, it is not accidental.

Yet, if you go online, reception to The Edge of Democracy is somewhat mixed amongst Brazilians, with criticism concentrating on Costa’s supposed disregard for impartiality and objectivity. I believe this analysis misfires. Firstly, the film documents deeply polarising political events – midway through the film a literal wall is constructed outside of Brazil’s Congressional buildings so that protestors on separate sides of the debate can be kept apart – and so the film is more an attempt to understand the cause of such polarisation rather than serve as a partisan projection of the political events.

Costa makes no attempt to hide her own perspective. She does precisely the opposite, in fact. And it is this that ultimately allows the film to triumph. Costa is unapologetic about her family’s past and unafraid to reveal it, arguing instead that “the story of this crisis… runs right through [her] family”. She notes how, whilst her grandparents were a part of the establishment once embodied by the military dictatorship, her parents were revolutionaries imprisoned at the same time as the likes of Rousseff. The telling of this story is not impartial - how can anything human be so? It is both delicately personal and ambitiously political.

The film is also littered throughout with long and lifeless tracking shots of the Praça dos Três Poderes, the area where all three branches of government power reside in Brazil. Most of the time they are used as chances for Costa to resume her ongoing monologue concerning the events unfolding. However, they also serve, for me at least, to subtly convey the film’s foreboding message; that the corruption and subversion of democracy is a slow and slippery process, easy to ignore and enable.

The Edge of Democracy is a story told from many angles; from Costa’s, from Lula’s, from everyday Brazilian people on both sides of the argument. It is a comprehensive film. Until recently I believed, probably foolishly so, that the stunning scenes of violence and conflict peppered throughout the film were an expression of unique Brazilian passion and edge. Yet, although this story has a distinctly Brazilian historical context, it is also a story that delivers a strikingly universal message.