The Circuit

"In Germany we didn't have a feeling of negative criticism of the film. We felt the film was going really well. It was only later on the Internet we saw the opposite," director Jose Padilha (pictured) said to Reuters.

And boy was the internet the opposite.  But Padilha could have seen it coming.  Variety's Jay Weissberg couldn't have been more pointed in his review of Padilha's film about Rio cops and criminals, "The Elite Squad":

...a one-note celebration of violence-for-good that plays like a recruitment film for fascist thugs.

And Jay wasn't the only one surprised by the film's Golden Bear win. 

Shane Danielson at indieWIRE also brought out the f word, remarking on the film's "genuinely fascist sensibility…Since when did Mike Huckabee start scripting action-thrillers?" 

NY Times' Dennis Lim wasn't impressed.  And now Filmbrain smells a conspiracy and he's fingering Harvey:

Did Harvey in any way influence this win? We'll never know for sure, but I'm finding it increasingly difficult to believe this was the result of an honest vote.

Without seeing the film, I find it difficult to believe that a jury run by Costa Gavras would bestow a Golden Bear to fascism.  It's also certainly not in Harvey's public character to back a right wing film at script stage (though the script was rewritten). 

There are also rumors that the film was rejected from the festival completely until Harvey intervened.

But within all this outrage, another issue is emerging -- is the message of "The Elite Squad" lost in translation, literally and culturally? 

Blog commmenters are jumping to the film's defense, many of them from South America where the film has been released and hugely successful.

from the NY Times:

It looks like the technical problems in the Berlin showing of “Elite Squad” really confused the perception of many reviewers. Just to make it clear. The narration and focus of the movie are not supposed to be neutral!! Of course they aren’t.

from Jurgen Fauth's blog on About:

The Elite Squad is a great film that represents a punch in the face of a wrotten society. I am sorry that some people just couldn´t understand the film's message... Hope that the eurocentric avan-guardist arguments stop there. Cinema is not the priviledge the initiated [sic] and the fact that one is familiar with Fassbinder or Stroheim or whatever does not in itself make your opinion about a movie valid without reasoning.

from The Circuit:

Variety's comment on the presumed fascism of "Elite Squad" is an absurd. The review is not substantially justified. If the voiceover is sufficient to define the ideological position of the narrative, most of the noir movies, "The Clockwork Orange", among other masterpieces should be called "fascists" also.