Pindorama—The True Story of the Seven Dwarves @ SILVERDOCS
Little people have been a comedy staple for years. Most humor in the area tends to stem from the disconnect between the psychological desire of bigger people to in some ways infantilize little people, and the reality of their being just like anyone else, only smaller. The theory goes, you show a little person who might involuntarily make the brain's "cute" receptors fire, and then show them swearing, smoking cigars, or being embarrassingly libidinous, and you've struck comedy gold. Their association with circuses and carnivals is longstanding as well, though before circuses realized their comedic potential they were mostly relegated to "freak" status in the sideshow.
In Brazil, though, there's a circus where not only have the little people made it to the main tent, but they own and run all three rings. The circus is Pindorama, and the owners are a real life set of seven dwarves, sons (and a daughter) of one of the most famous circus dwarves the country ever knew. He fathered a dozen children, and seven of them were tiny in stature as he was. When he died, they took it upon themselves to create the circus he always dreamed of running, which is the subject of the new Brazilian documentary Pindorama—The True Story of the Seven Dwarves, now showing at SILVERDOCS.
Pindorma, the circus, has been a very successful venture, popular throughout the northern Brazilian towns that it travels around. Judging from the audiences shown in the film, it's no Ringling Bros., but it's a well loved, smallish regional circus. They've got a hook, with dwarves as the focus of the show rather than side characters, and it's a hook that works. Pindorama the film is not quite as successful.
The film does have its interesting moments. Simply seeing the day to day operations of the circus holds its own fascination, and the peculiarities that arise in those operations due to the stature of its owner/operators does make for compelling watching. Additionally, treading the high wire between honest curiosity and exploitation is no easy feat, and the filmmakers manage to avoid much need for a net. They treat their subjects fairly dispassionately, and if there's any humor in the family's interactions, it tends to be honestly won; we're laughing with them, not at them.
Examining the familial interactions is where the movie is strongest. There's the rivalry between the brothers who take the lead in management. The stories of the siblings who perform. Another sibling dreams of splitting off to start his own circus (though this storyline is dropped without much explanation). Then there's the husbands, wives, and girlfriends (none of whom are little people: one of the brothers claims that dwarves aren't attracted to other dwarves). Add to that a large extended family (of varying sizes) each with their own role in front of and behind the spotlight, and it's no surprise there's no shortage of stories in the Pindorama circus.
But the filmmakers never really delve too deeply into those stories. They adopt a strictly formal style that divides the film into segments devoted to each of the seven. Those segments inevitably cross, but the way the film is structured, it's difficult to see the whole picture. It's all closeups of a mosaic with only momentary flashes from a distance. Luckily, the charisma and magnetism of the characters, likely the same thing that attracts people to their performances, is enough to make Pindorama a gem, if a flawed one.
Pindorama premieres tonight at 9:15 p.m., and screens again on Friday at 10:45 p.m. at the SILVERDOCS AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival.