Ao estrear em dezembro de 2008, celebrando o centenário da morte de Machado de Assis, a série Capitu marcou época na televisão brasileira. A produção provou que é possível adaptar textos densos da literatura para a televisão sem recorrer a fórmulas fáceis ou conservadoras. A direção de Luiz Fernando de Carvalho desafiou o público, exigindo uma participação ativa na decodificação dos símbolos, metáforas e referências artísticas.

For collectors, art critics, and admirers of Brazilian culture, the keyword represents more than just a set of paintings; it is a visual thesis on betrayal, memory, and the impossibility of objective truth.

Visually, Capitu was a radical departure from the standard period drama. Filmed primarily on a single, decaying location—the old in Rio de Janeiro—the production embraced a theatrical, almost expressionist aesthetic. Carvalho deliberately used grand red curtains, theatrical lighting, and "pausas dramáticas" (dramatic pauses) with an on-screen orchestra, foregrounding the act of performance itself. One of the most remarkable innovations was the creation of a custom "lente-Dom Casmurro"—a 30cm water-filled retina attached to the camera lens—to simulate the watery, memory-distorted perspective of the jealous narrator and his vision of Capitu's "ressaca" (undertow) eyes.

Machado de Assis construiu Dom Casmurro em primeira pessoa para que o leitor fosse capturado pela perspectiva de um advogado ciumento e manipulador. Carvalho traduz essa armadilha literária de forma primorosa através da metalinguagem televisiva.

Interestingly, while the series is inspired by Bento’s jealousy, Bento is never painted. Instead, Carvalho includes ghostly background elements—a vague silhouette of a man (Escobar) or the angular roof of the Seminary. The focus remains solely on Capitu’s solitude, suggesting that the entire drama of Dom Casmurro exists inside the male narrator's head, not in Capitu’s actions.

O diretor compreendeu que o cerne de Dom Casmurro não é o adultério em si, mas a obsessão do narrador. A câmera adota o ponto de vista de Bentinho, mas a encenação teatralizada expõe as costuras dessa narrativa. O telespectador é constantemente lembrado de que está assistindo a uma versão manipulada dos fatos.

More than 15 years later, Capitu stands as a landmark of innovative literary adaptation, inspiring academic analysis of metafiction and further ambitious productions by Luiz Fernando Carvalho. Capitu and its peers show that Brazilian television need not be a passive medium, but a vibrant canvas for pushing the boundaries of how stories are told.

Carvalho approached Capitu as a dialogue between old and new, rejecting both traditional adaptation and period-piece reconstruction. His visionary choices included:

Upon its release, Capitu was met with polarized reactions. Critics and audiences accustomed to conventional adaptations were disoriented by its non-naturalistic, self-referential style. However, it was also lauded by others for its artistic bravery and intellectual rigor. The miniseries faced low ratings, leading to the indefinite suspension of the "Projeto Quadrante".

Para quem busca uma obra televisiva que desafia as convenções narrativas e mergulha na psicologia humana com uma estética refinada, é indispensável.

For Machado de Assis's centennial, Carvalho didn't want a faithful, page-by-page translation. In his own words: "I don't believe in adaptations. Adaptations are always, in a way, a flattening of the original work, an assassination of the original text". Instead, he called his work an "approximation" — a dialogue. This dialogue is why the series is named after the female protagonist, Capitu , and not the bitter narrator Bento Santiago (Dom Casmurro). The director was reaffirming the novel's central, unanswerable doubt as a vital process of modern culture. This doubt—whether Capitu betrayed her husband or not—is not a flaw but the novel's core, an engine of perpetual interpretation.