I am writing this review mainly to balance out the reviews on here so far. This documentary is centered around the first interview with a woman who murdered her husband. It was a case that was famous in Brazil due to the victim being the extremely wealthy heir to a food empire. However unlike the impression many the other reviews give, a wide array of other viewpoints are included in the documentary such as testimony of the victim's family, the family's attorneys, investigators, the lead prosecutor, the victim's friends, reporters that worked the case and others.
What I think many find so disturbing is that it does humanize the murderer. However this is not terribly unusual for the genre except in this case it is a woman. Thus many of these reviews show the pervasive sexism which is addressed in the film. This is not to say it "excuses" the crime, but to say it does provide insights into why it occured and how it was handled by prosecutors and the press. The fact the producers dared to deal with misogyny at all is why there are so many outraged posts on this documentary (unlike say the 500th documentary on why Ted Bundy was a "genius").
I just want to point out that for all the cries of reverse sexism in these reviews, in actual fact women who kill their abusers usually receive more severe sentences. I do not know the stats in Brazil (I assume they are worse) but in the US on average women that kill their abusive husbands get 15 years *longer* sentences than abusive men who kill their wives. Men who murder their wives often are depicted as temporarily insane, for instance a Kentucky man cut off his wife's head and got 5 years in a psychiatric ward as his entire punishment. Whereas a woman who fired a warning shot at her husband (which hit a wall) after he tried to choke her to death got 20 years. Anyway the point is it is actually the societal norm to emphathize with men no matter what the circumstances of the case are.
This is evident in how many minimize Marcos' (the victim) behavior as simply that of a "bad husband" when it seems like a far deeper issue than that. Marcos essentially couldn't have normal relationships with women. He "dates" exclusively prostitutes. This is how he met the woman who murderd him, Elize. She was a prostitute who then became his mistress (he was married at the time), then his wife. Marcos goes on to repeat this same pattern by cheating on Elize with another prositute who he intended to marry. The power dynamic of a extremely wealthy man basically buying a poor woman companion cannot be overstated. It shows not someone who was simply "shy" but someone who needed to have complete power in relationships.
Elize was from a very poor background with significant trauma early on. Her father abandoned her, and her mother essentially did as well, going to work in a far off city and leaving her with her sexually abusive step-father. Anyway, again this is not to say murder is a perfectly fine option and she should get a prize, but her background shows why she would be vulnerable to an abuser, and would snap in such a terrible way. I think what people are conflating is *excuse* with *causality*. There are important social questions raised here: allowing rampant child abuse creates screwed up adults, and when wealthy men can do whatever they want poor women resisting them may feel totally desperate. Basically Elize is shaped by the multiple traumas of living in a society that is patriarchal and classist. She became brutal to survive. This doesn't make her an angel, or even likeable, but it makes her a 3-dimensional human.
The tortured logic of the prosecution was interesting to behold. For instance the uber creepy medical examiner and the lead prosecutor invent this idea that she must have had an accomplice. This was to prove premeditation which would have increased her sentence. But the nonsensical part of this, is that the accomplice avoided being on camera by using secret tunnels under the building and so forth. However the obvious problem with this is that Elize left a complete trail of evidence of her commiting the murder on those same security cameras. So it's pretty clear that camera issue never even occured to her. (The lead detective also thinks the accomplice idea was ridiculous.)
Imo it seems pretty clear from the evidence that it was not premeditated. She is a law school graduate, so has some intelligence, yet the entire crime was pulled off in a sloppy way where it was 100% obvious she did it. The disposal of the body for instance clearly had no forethought (it was in bright blue plastic bags in eye shot of the road with all identifying material intact). Both she and her husband were gun collectors and hunters so there were plenty of ways she could have set up an "accident" where she shot him and got away with it.
I think it is hard for people who haven't experienced abuse to really understand the mindset, and often people have a hard time grasping the impact of abuse that isn't physical. But the fact that she lived in this strange closed off world with him, where he constantly questioned her sanity, degraded her, etc creates a super warped sense of reality. Also it can't be forgotten that he did have immense power and privilege so the idea that she could simply walk away may have seemed impossible to her (ie- that he would take her daughter and drag up her history as a prostitute in court).
Anyway given all that was presented it seems far more plausible to me that she snapped and shot him. Whether this was actual "self-defense" I am not so sure. I think it was more anger/revenge and just reaching a boiling point. Her history of being abandoned also may have made the prospect of him leaving her more devastating too. Given that she herself claims she can't really name the emotion she felt when pulling the trigger, my guess is she was kinda just on autopilot and maybe even dissociative. This obviously it was not a choice she should have made, but it doesn't make sense that she sat down and plotted it in any way given how badly it was done.
Anyway, enough spoilers, just rebutting some of the other things I've seen written which fall back on the conspiracies and so forth. It seems a lot more mundane just with a really rich guy. Basically a wife shot her cheating husband during an argument. But what makes it interesting are the personal stories and the issues it raises about class, sex, race, etc in Brazil.
All told it is highly watchable and effectively contrasted point and counterpoint to weave the story through several interesting turns. The film-makers didn't really force a heavy-handed conclusion and instead raised questions with ambiguous anwers. So if the main point of watching "true crime" for you is a simple story arc of total villain who is righteously defeated, this does not deliver that. Instead it documents the human failings, idiosyncrasies, emotions, irrationality, and trauma that can lead to a bizarre turn of horrendous events.
What I think many find so disturbing is that it does humanize the murderer. However this is not terribly unusual for the genre except in this case it is a woman. Thus many of these reviews show the pervasive sexism which is addressed in the film. This is not to say it "excuses" the crime, but to say it does provide insights into why it occured and how it was handled by prosecutors and the press. The fact the producers dared to deal with misogyny at all is why there are so many outraged posts on this documentary (unlike say the 500th documentary on why Ted Bundy was a "genius").
I just want to point out that for all the cries of reverse sexism in these reviews, in actual fact women who kill their abusers usually receive more severe sentences. I do not know the stats in Brazil (I assume they are worse) but in the US on average women that kill their abusive husbands get 15 years *longer* sentences than abusive men who kill their wives. Men who murder their wives often are depicted as temporarily insane, for instance a Kentucky man cut off his wife's head and got 5 years in a psychiatric ward as his entire punishment. Whereas a woman who fired a warning shot at her husband (which hit a wall) after he tried to choke her to death got 20 years. Anyway the point is it is actually the societal norm to emphathize with men no matter what the circumstances of the case are.
This is evident in how many minimize Marcos' (the victim) behavior as simply that of a "bad husband" when it seems like a far deeper issue than that. Marcos essentially couldn't have normal relationships with women. He "dates" exclusively prostitutes. This is how he met the woman who murderd him, Elize. She was a prostitute who then became his mistress (he was married at the time), then his wife. Marcos goes on to repeat this same pattern by cheating on Elize with another prositute who he intended to marry. The power dynamic of a extremely wealthy man basically buying a poor woman companion cannot be overstated. It shows not someone who was simply "shy" but someone who needed to have complete power in relationships.
Elize was from a very poor background with significant trauma early on. Her father abandoned her, and her mother essentially did as well, going to work in a far off city and leaving her with her sexually abusive step-father. Anyway, again this is not to say murder is a perfectly fine option and she should get a prize, but her background shows why she would be vulnerable to an abuser, and would snap in such a terrible way. I think what people are conflating is *excuse* with *causality*. There are important social questions raised here: allowing rampant child abuse creates screwed up adults, and when wealthy men can do whatever they want poor women resisting them may feel totally desperate. Basically Elize is shaped by the multiple traumas of living in a society that is patriarchal and classist. She became brutal to survive. This doesn't make her an angel, or even likeable, but it makes her a 3-dimensional human.
The tortured logic of the prosecution was interesting to behold. For instance the uber creepy medical examiner and the lead prosecutor invent this idea that she must have had an accomplice. This was to prove premeditation which would have increased her sentence. But the nonsensical part of this, is that the accomplice avoided being on camera by using secret tunnels under the building and so forth. However the obvious problem with this is that Elize left a complete trail of evidence of her commiting the murder on those same security cameras. So it's pretty clear that camera issue never even occured to her. (The lead detective also thinks the accomplice idea was ridiculous.)
Imo it seems pretty clear from the evidence that it was not premeditated. She is a law school graduate, so has some intelligence, yet the entire crime was pulled off in a sloppy way where it was 100% obvious she did it. The disposal of the body for instance clearly had no forethought (it was in bright blue plastic bags in eye shot of the road with all identifying material intact). Both she and her husband were gun collectors and hunters so there were plenty of ways she could have set up an "accident" where she shot him and got away with it.
I think it is hard for people who haven't experienced abuse to really understand the mindset, and often people have a hard time grasping the impact of abuse that isn't physical. But the fact that she lived in this strange closed off world with him, where he constantly questioned her sanity, degraded her, etc creates a super warped sense of reality. Also it can't be forgotten that he did have immense power and privilege so the idea that she could simply walk away may have seemed impossible to her (ie- that he would take her daughter and drag up her history as a prostitute in court).
Anyway given all that was presented it seems far more plausible to me that she snapped and shot him. Whether this was actual "self-defense" I am not so sure. I think it was more anger/revenge and just reaching a boiling point. Her history of being abandoned also may have made the prospect of him leaving her more devastating too. Given that she herself claims she can't really name the emotion she felt when pulling the trigger, my guess is she was kinda just on autopilot and maybe even dissociative. This obviously it was not a choice she should have made, but it doesn't make sense that she sat down and plotted it in any way given how badly it was done.
Anyway, enough spoilers, just rebutting some of the other things I've seen written which fall back on the conspiracies and so forth. It seems a lot more mundane just with a really rich guy. Basically a wife shot her cheating husband during an argument. But what makes it interesting are the personal stories and the issues it raises about class, sex, race, etc in Brazil.
All told it is highly watchable and effectively contrasted point and counterpoint to weave the story through several interesting turns. The film-makers didn't really force a heavy-handed conclusion and instead raised questions with ambiguous anwers. So if the main point of watching "true crime" for you is a simple story arc of total villain who is righteously defeated, this does not deliver that. Instead it documents the human failings, idiosyncrasies, emotions, irrationality, and trauma that can lead to a bizarre turn of horrendous events.