The film “Evita” is a musical biography of Eva Peron, the former First Lady of Argentina.  The movie begins with the announcement of Evita’s death, then flashes back to her childhood and begins her story from the moment of her father’s funeral, where her family is refused entrance into the church because they are lower class.  The movie then follows Evita as a young teenager, who moves to Buenos Aires to become an actress. During this time, she is portrayed as being a promiscuous woman, jumping from one man to another to further her career, until one fateful night, she meets Juan Peron.  Not long after, Evita gets married to Peron and helps him to win the Presidency, after which she puts all her time and effort into helping the poor and working class people of Argentina until she passes away.

Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator, wrote the Pedagogy of the Oppressed in 1970, in which he argued that the ignorance of the poor resulted directly from economic, social, and political domination.  He stated that in some countries the oppressors use the educational system to maintain the silence of the disadvantaged.  Freire believed that the right kind of education, such as one based on dialogue, will allow every human being to develop a new awareness of self and freedom and as a result, this new awareness will allow every person to be regarded as more than just an object responding to uncontrollable change. Freire’s perspectives on oppression, education, and dialogue as freedom are universal; these ideas can be applied to any time period, geographic location, culture or people, because I am sure that everyone has experienced it or is currently experiencing it to some extent. Freire’s ideas can be applied to the film “Evita” because the movie shows how the poor people are oppressed under the economic and political domination of the wealthy elites until Evita enters the political arena.  By directly interacting with the needy and providing them with books and an opportunity to obtain a fair education, Evita served as the voice against oppression and allowed the lower class people to develop a new awareness of themselves and their freedom.

The universal theme of the movie seems to be one of oppression and challenge.  The theme of oppression is portrayed by the poor and working class people (which includes Evita and her family), who are looked down on by the wealthy elites, who struggle to make ends meet and who receive no aid from the government for their hardships.  The theme of challenge is portrayed best by Evita, who as the First Lady, has to fight against the high society of Argentina in order to build her foundation and to provide for and ease the pain of the less fortunate. 

In this movie, the wealthy upper class society is the antagonists, who are privileged and therefore oppress those who aren’t in their circle.  Evita is the protagonist, who remembers her roots and where she came from, and thus, serves to be the voice of the poor and oppressed even after she joins the privileged high society. The upper class people disapprove of Evita because of her poor background and scorn her efforts to help the poor.  She deliberately took actions that she knew would upset the wealthy people, but she didn’t care about what they thought of her just as long as she was serving her people to the best of her abilities.  For example, Evita directed government money towards the Eva Peron Foundation, which she used to aid the poor, by providing them with food, clothes, shelter, books, and anything else they needed.

This film is connected to the Contemporary Period of Latin America.  Eva Peron was actually listed as one of the research topics under this period.

On a scale of one being the worst and five being the best, I would rate this film a 2.5.  I found the movie was hard to follow because it was a musical and also because the beginning of the movie jumped to and from different phases in Evita’s life.  Since I had researched on Evita for Project 5, I was able to compare my findings to what was portrayed in the movie and I feel that the film did no justice to this remarkable woman.  I found the movie to be a bit inaccurate and felt that it focused more on her promiscuity than all the hard work that Evita did for her people.  I would not recommend this movie because I feel that it does not give a full and true depiction of Eva Peron.