Every Day the Same Night brings justice to the families of the Nightclub Kiss victims

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On January 27 of that year, the tragedy of Kiss disco he will be ten years old. The fire killed 242 people and a decade later still has no exact definition of its culprits. The club – or what is left of it – is still standing, with the ‘Kiss’ logo that has become world famous, dusted by time and affecting all who go about their routine on Rua das Andradas. This was a tragedy of eerie detail, that has reclaimed young college students with their lives before them, and that will shock us all no matter how much time passes.

Every day the same nightthe book of Daniela Arbex on which the Netflix miniseries of the same name was based, was released in 2018. In it, Daniela separates the chapters by telling the horrors experienced by the families of the young people killed or injured in the disco. Some stories were selected by her and part of these stories even made it into the script of the miniseries by Julia Resenda And Carol Minêm. In the pages of Daniela’s work the language is rather direct, documentary, clearly journalistic; which gives the adaptation a chance to make this narrative more engaging and emotional.

For most people playing the miniseries there will be a lot of curiosity about the fire itself. The book traces events within the club in a timely manner and, for the most part, towards the end of the pages. The miniseries takes a more linear decision and begins with the day of the party that brought the young people together in a disco. This is necessary so that, in the following episodes, the audience gets involved with the families of these young people, since, in fact, Daniela’s book is about them and doesn’t exactly go into the direct victims.

The production of the miniseries has done a painstaking job of reconstructing the events of that night. The interior and exterior of the nightclub look exactly like the originals. However it is possible to note how the script and the direction avoided exploring the details of how the disco worked, what were its spaces, its exits, what were the bathrooms where most of the deaths occurred; as well as avoiding better showing what the routine of the house was like. All of this could have been illustrated with sequences between characters and would also help further expose the whole cycle of neglect resulting in tragedy.

It’s as if the miniseries is in a hurry to escape the club, almost as much as the characters. Once the fire breaks out, the cameras led by Julia and Carol are guided to portray the darkness and panic as realistically as possible. Survivor testimony at the time extended the events in a way that provided a better understanding of what would go on inside; but the management made the decision to be more direct which is perfectly understandable under the circumstances. However, when we come to the case study of the following episodes, there are some gaps that we fill with our previous knowledge and not exactly with what the miniseries shows.

Every day the same impunity

What could happen Every day the same night this is what happens when people watch a reenactment of real events looking for details: they lose interest when the direct exploration of the tragedy ends. The fire happens in episode 1, the search for the victims happens in episode 2, and then we get into what should be most important: the families’ struggle to hold the perpetrators accountable. The miniseries actually delivers the strength of the final episodes to its adult cast. It is the detail of the pain of these families that interests the plot.

For this, the group of parents formed by Paul Gorgulho, Bianca Byington, Leonardo Medeiros, Deborah Lamm and especially Thelmo Fernando, dominates the final stretch with a moving work. It is from there that filmmakers manage to extract the beauty in the midst of a story with so much pain. Sequences are difficult… painful. Impossible not to feel a shock when we observe those parents realize that if their children are not in the hospital it is because they are among the dead… All this chaos gives way to a series of sad scenes, packaged by a very well national soundtrack choice. , which ends up producing, involuntarily, a collective of tributes.

The text does not always help the commitment of these actors. Daniela’s narrative, in the book, is competent, but not very artistic. The directors are able to resolve this impasse visually, mainly in episodes 3, 4 and 5. The text, however, has more instability throughout all of them. There are very inspired moments (like Thelmo Fernandes’ powerful final monologue), but many ready-made sentences often take some dialogue away from the necessary naturalness.

Everything in the miniseries is full of emotion and it is difficult to pass an analysis through this filter so full of extreme human feelings. One of these not-so-well-crafted dialogues is often accompanied by a sequence in which the parents deal with the pain of a loss; and it is impossible not to leave out any preciousness in this regard. The horror and pain of those parents is out of proportion to any supposed understanding we have without experiencing it. Every day the same night it is a production that does not “defend” itself with that, but which inevitably empties the obligation to judge it as a work of art.

The trial of the defendants of the fire (who erred through negligence) has already taken place and they have been convicted. Before the start of 2023 their convictions were overturned. The Kiss nightclub tragedy will last 10 years under this reality. Those involved are at large, awaiting a retrial, amid this latency of guilt and outrage surrounding the case. None of them wanted to kill anyone, but they did. Perhaps the existence of this mini-series once again highlights the open wound of a forever scarred community. Nobody wanted to kill, but he did. There are 242 families still stained with soot. There are 242 testimonies of this buried in Santa Maria.