The Lion Has Seven Heads (1970)
There's a certain kind of film that dares you to keep watching, and Glauber Rocha's The Lion Has Seven Heads is very much one of them. It's a baffling, swirling beast of a picture, and I mean that in the most genuinely ambivalent way possible. Going in expecting a coherent narrative is a mistake. This is unapologetically avant-garde Cinema Novo, functioning primarily as a fierce, chaotic commentary on colonialism and revolutionary struggle. If you're not prepared for that, you're in for a rude awakening.
The dialogue is deliberately surreal, and the cinematography frequently abandons traditional logic altogether in favour of jarring, symbolic imagery. Nothing about it is passive. Rocha isn't interested in holding your hand, and frankly, that's both the film's greatest strength and its most exhausting quality.
Fair play to the audio team, though, because the soundtrack is genuinely cracking. The inclusion of local songs and traditional music provides a vital, rhythmic anchor that grounds the otherwise chaotic visuals. When the film leans into its cultural roots through sound, it manages to capture a raw, authentic energy that cuts right through the stylistic noise. Those moments remind you of the very real human stakes behind all the abstract metaphors, and they're the sequences I found myself most grateful for. It's the kind of textured, location-rooted musical fabric that I also found compelling in Candomblé in Togo, where sound does the heavy lifting that images alone can't quite manage.
The problems, though, are hard to ignore. The handling of the central female character is a real stumble. What could have been a compelling portrait of resistance gets flattened into something rather blunt and one-dimensional. There's a missed opportunity there, and it niggles. Rocha is clearly trying to construct an archetype, a symbol rather than a person, but the result feels more like a shortcut than a deliberate artistic choice.
Then there's the pacing, which is a genuine slog at times. Rocha insists on lingering over long, dialogue-free sequences that, rather than building atmospheric tension, simply make the runtime feel considerably heavier than it needs to be. There were stretches where I found my patience being tested just when I wanted the film to find its footing and push forward. It never quite does.
And yet, I can't dismiss it entirely. Respecting a film's legacy and actually enjoying the sit-down are two entirely different things, and with this one I'm firmly in the former camp rather than the latter. Rocha was genuinely pushing the boundaries of what political cinema could look like, how radical it could be in both form and content. That matters. His vision has earned its place in the archives, and there's real fire here when the film connects.
It's just that connecting feels like hard work, and not always the rewarding kind. The Lion Has Seven Heads sits in my memory as a fascinating, deeply flawed historical artefact. I'm glad I saw it. I wouldn't rush back.
Three stars.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 1970 | Watched: 2026-07-30
