 | Movie title: City of God Starring: Alexandre Rodrigues ....Buscape - Rocket, Leandro Firmino....Ze Pequeno - Li'l Ze, Phellipe Haagensen....Bene - Benny, Seu Jorge....Mane Galinha - Knockout Ned, Alice Braga....Angelica Directed by: Fernando Meirelles, Katia Lund (co-director)
Written by: Braulio Mantovani
Genre: drama
Year: 2002
Country: Brazil
Language: Portuguese
Runtime: 130 min
Media: DVD
Imdb:
Rating: 10
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Cidade de Deus (City of God) is a housing project built in the 1960's that became one of the most dangerous places in Rio de Janeiro. The tale tells the stories of many characters whose lives sometimes intersect. However, all is seen through the eyes of a singular narrator: Buscape, a poor black youth too frail and scared to become an outlaw but also to smart to be content with underpaid, menial jobs. He grows up in a very violent environment. The odds are all against him. But Buscape soon discovers that he can see reality differently than others. His redemption is that he's been given an artist's point of view as a keen-eyed photographer. As Buscape is not the real protagonist of the film--only the narrator--he is not the one who makes the decisions that will determine the sequence of events. Nevertheless, not only his life is attached to what happens in the story, but it is also through Buscape's perspective of life that one can understand the complicated layers and humanity of a world, apparently condemned to endless violence.
Gorgeous, tragic, funny, brutal and gripping. This is the type of feature that should be a part of any film studies class. The effective use of colors, camerawork, setting and narrative structure is quite near flawless.
This film does for Rio De Janeiro what Kids did for New York City. You see during the 60's down in the Rio it wasn't all crazy spring break partying but that's what the government wants to sell so they packed up all the poor people and leave them to rot in Cidade de Deus. It's a very harsh change from party land to third world slum. The use of color in the film really heightens this difference. Cidade de Deus is yellows and browns with no real vibrance where as Rio (the good areas) is a neon rainbow. It has a look of a Tony Scott film but not yanked to his sometimes nauseating extremes.
Unlike Kids, which takes place over a 24 hour day, Cidade de Deus stretches out across the life of Buscape(Rocket) from his youth in the slums to becoming a photojournalist in Rio. And if told in a normal narrative structure the film wouldn't have nearly as successful to me. The amount of information told from point a to b would have made it a very boring documentary type of film. Instead we are slapped in the face with bits and pieces. Just enough information to understand the next sequence of events which might not even be told in a completely linear order as well.
The way certain characters are introduced into the story is brilliant. A new character isn't the focus of a scene but we take note of them when there is a freeze frame and narrator Rocket saying something like, "This is Knockout Ned. More on him later." From there the story continues until that new character's story arch takes over. Eventually though it always wraps back around to Rocket. Also, a scene which is repeated no less than 4 times from multiple angles never feels boring because each time the scene starts you are bombarded with new information about the characters and settings involved.
It's really amazing how many of the main cast of characters are based on real people. It makes the whole film feel that much more real and disturbing. The end credit crawl has the actors names next to photos of their real life counterparts. At the end there is even a tv interview with the real Knockout Ned that was re-enacted in the film.
Simply a great film and a must see.
Oh and for the people who have seen Hostel... those bubblegum kids ain't got shit on the kids in Cidade de Deus.
