Rodrigo Santoro & Daniel Rezende On Family, Adoption & Humanity In Netflix’s Brazilian Film ‘The Son Of A Thousand Men’

EXCLUSIVE: Netflix’s latest Brazilian movie is The Son of a Thousand Men, an adaptation of Valter Hugo Mãe’s novel (‘O Filho de Mil Homens’ in Portuguese). It tells the story of Crisóstomo, a fisherman who has lived outside of mainstream society and dreams of having a son. His life duly changes when he meets Camilo, played by Miguel Martines, an orphan boy whom he fosters. Brazilian star Rodrigo Santoro (300, Love Actually) sat down with Deadline to talk about playing Crisóstomo, and writer-director Daniel Rezende tells us about the penning the screenplay and directing.

DEADLINE: Daniel, this is not an easy novel to adapt, what was your approach?

DANIEL REZENDE: I heard from a lot of people that it is a book that’s impossible to adapt because of the way Valter Hugo Mãe dealt with the words in Portuguese; it’s so poetic, it’s so sensorial, it’s so magical. I didn’t think about how hard it would be to adapt. I was completely blown away by the book and moved by its humanity. He described a lot of feelings that I felt completely connected to.

DEADLINE: Rodrigo, what did you see within the character of Crisóstomo?

RODRIGO SANTORO: He’s profoundly connected to nature and profoundly disconnected from people, to society. That creates a person that is very wise, in one way, because he’s connected to Mother Nature, but also very naive, and free of all kinds of vices and codes that we have in our society. It makes for a very interesting man who is completely open and not judgmental, and somebody who truly listens.

DEADLINE: What did you ask of Rodrigo as the film’s director?

DANIEL REZENDE: It’s different from every role that he has done. In the book, Crisóstomo talks a lot. In the movie, we actually made him pretty silent. He doesn’t speak much.

Something that was very important to me in this movie was to create this reference of masculinity that I don’t see in art. It is a masculinity that is based on listening, empathy and connection. Crisóstomo grew up apart from society, so he doesn’t know the codes, he doesn’t have the beliefs of society. He’s very connected to nature, but he doesn’t know how to connect to people. He’s not afraid of showing his feelings and he’s not judging.

DEADLINE: Rodrigo, In one sense it is a film about family and adoption, but did you feel there are other themes?

RODRIGO SANTORO: Crisóstomo wants to be a father and is looking for a son, but the film goes beyond adopting a person. The movie is trying to explore the idea of adopting ‘the other’; the other person, adopting the world, adopting yourself, and truly looking inwards in a world in which we’re desperate to find connections, but more and more we’re just staying on our screens. We don’t look into the eyes of another person. We don’t stop to have a conversation.

DEADLINE: You write and direct so have oversight of the words and the look and feel of the film. What were you looking for in terms of the aesthetic and tone?

DANIEL REZENDE: It was the first time that I actually wrote a script myself and I had to run away from the words that Valter uses in the book and transform this poetic work into images, into silence, and into situations that felt cinematic. The biggest challenge was to build this magic realism, which has no place, no time.

The photography, the art-direction, the costume design, everything was made for us to not understand where we are, and bring us to this idea of belonging to this place, which is here and now, but it’s also everywhere and at any time. There is a sense of timelessness.

DEADLINE: Daniel talks about sense of timelessness, but what is the resonance for the world we live in today?

RODRIGO SANTORO: Crisóstomo is very contemporary and perfect for the world we live in, and for all the discussions that we are having about masculinity and about connection in a world where we are very much absorbed by how much we have to perform, and how much we have to win.