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CITY OF GOD ****
One of the worst slums in the world is in Rio de Janeiro, it is called The City of God. It is here where the movie shows us a history of three generations of gangsters as they are raised in this completely unlawful and absolutely dangerous urban dwelling. The story centers around two young men; Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), who abhors violence and dreams of being a photographer, and L'il Ze (Firmino da Hora), a cold blooded killer who only dreams of power. Both of these young men follow different paths but share a common similarity, they are both trapped in the city.
The film is narrated by Rocket, who, at the beginning of the film, finds himself trapped between a large pack of gangsters with automatic weapons, and the equally corrupt police. As he tells it, “Fight and you’ll never survive, run and you’ll never escape.” We’re taken back to his youth, in his attempt to explain how he got to this point, to the 1960’s where he is still an adolescent and his older brother is part of local gang. The City of God is a new development at that time, the streets are dirt, the playground is dirt, and all the shanties everyone lives in are caked in dirt. There is very little electricity available and no plumbing for anyone. Just a few miles away is the mecca of tourism; downtown Rio, but it might as well be on another continent for all the good it will do the dwellers of this slum.
During the next two hours of the film, it is shown how one generation loses power to the next through a succession of violence and betrayal. L’il Ze and Rocket belong to the second generation which will encompass the 70’s, and generate more loss of life than the previous generation thought possible, or even desired to commit. I don’t want to speak any more about the plot, because one of the main strengths of the film is the discovery of who is who and what they’re existence will mean to all the people in the city. We watch as the dirt streets turn to cement, and then the cement into rubble, and all the while the blood pours onto whatever is available.
The film has been criticized of excessive usage of gratuitous violence, but a story like this, in order to have any impact, has got to be able to show it the way it was. This is a true story, the people portrayed in it have lived and died, and in order to appreciate the magnitude of the horror that this part of the world lives in, we need to see the brutality. The Director (Fernando Meirelles) does an amazing job at giving it to us straight. The bloodshed is only excessive because it was in real life. There aren’t any karate kicks, or taking 10 bullets and still fighting, or anything of that nature you see in more stylized violent movies. In City of God one bullet does the trick more often than not, and there’s no beauty in the killing. It is shocking, real, and truly sad.
What I liked best about City of God is how real it all seemed. The people who starred in this did an amazing job making it really appear as if it were a documentary. It does a good job at showing the hopelessness in an environment that is completely unforgiving and doesn’t give a quarter to the children either. Perhaps the most powerful performance was da Hora’s L’il Ze. I have never seen a character so completely ruthless in my life. Even as a young child in the 60’s, he had an unrelenting bloodlust (see picture above). It is his part that really propels the movie into the four star range. I found that I could't really identify with the character’s in this film except in an animalistic way. With some of them being good, only to be turned bad. All because of a bullet.
One of the worst slums in the world is in Rio de Janeiro, it is called The City of God. It is here where the movie shows us a history of three generations of gangsters as they are raised in this completely unlawful and absolutely dangerous urban dwelling. The story centers around two young men; Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), who abhors violence and dreams of being a photographer, and L'il Ze (Firmino da Hora), a cold blooded killer who only dreams of power. Both of these young men follow different paths but share a common similarity, they are both trapped in the city.
The film is narrated by Rocket, who, at the beginning of the film, finds himself trapped between a large pack of gangsters with automatic weapons, and the equally corrupt police. As he tells it, “Fight and you’ll never survive, run and you’ll never escape.” We’re taken back to his youth, in his attempt to explain how he got to this point, to the 1960’s where he is still an adolescent and his older brother is part of local gang. The City of God is a new development at that time, the streets are dirt, the playground is dirt, and all the shanties everyone lives in are caked in dirt. There is very little electricity available and no plumbing for anyone. Just a few miles away is the mecca of tourism; downtown Rio, but it might as well be on another continent for all the good it will do the dwellers of this slum.
During the next two hours of the film, it is shown how one generation loses power to the next through a succession of violence and betrayal. L’il Ze and Rocket belong to the second generation which will encompass the 70’s, and generate more loss of life than the previous generation thought possible, or even desired to commit. I don’t want to speak any more about the plot, because one of the main strengths of the film is the discovery of who is who and what they’re existence will mean to all the people in the city. We watch as the dirt streets turn to cement, and then the cement into rubble, and all the while the blood pours onto whatever is available.
The film has been criticized of excessive usage of gratuitous violence, but a story like this, in order to have any impact, has got to be able to show it the way it was. This is a true story, the people portrayed in it have lived and died, and in order to appreciate the magnitude of the horror that this part of the world lives in, we need to see the brutality. The Director (Fernando Meirelles) does an amazing job at giving it to us straight. The bloodshed is only excessive because it was in real life. There aren’t any karate kicks, or taking 10 bullets and still fighting, or anything of that nature you see in more stylized violent movies. In City of God one bullet does the trick more often than not, and there’s no beauty in the killing. It is shocking, real, and truly sad.
What I liked best about City of God is how real it all seemed. The people who starred in this did an amazing job making it really appear as if it were a documentary. It does a good job at showing the hopelessness in an environment that is completely unforgiving and doesn’t give a quarter to the children either. Perhaps the most powerful performance was da Hora’s L’il Ze. I have never seen a character so completely ruthless in my life. Even as a young child in the 60’s, he had an unrelenting bloodlust (see picture above). It is his part that really propels the movie into the four star range. I found that I could't really identify with the character’s in this film except in an animalistic way. With some of them being good, only to be turned bad. All because of a bullet.