City of God

Submitted by on 4 March, 2003 - 12:00

FILM: Chris Brown reviews The City of God, directed by Fernando Meirelles
January 2003

When people tell me that The Godfather is their favourite film I find my eyes involuntarily rolling upwards. I don’t really get gangster films. City of God may make me change my mind. However, although its subject matter is basically the same Fernando Meirelles’ film is as far removed from the slick, polished and ultimately empty Hollywood gangster genre as you can imagine.

The film centres on the ironically named “City of God” shanty town on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, a place which swelled with dispossessed peasants and the urban poor in the 1960s. In its portrayal of the pressures on young men and even boys to turn to crime the film is brutally honest. At first the film shows the local hoods as Brazilian Robin Hoods, part of their community, standing up for the slums when nothing and nobody will ease the poverty. But the film soon begins to show the reality of the violence — the destruction of the humanity and the inevitable brutal end that the life of a hood brings.

The story follows two parallel lives over the late seventies into the early eighties and is narrated by Rocket (Alexendre Rodrigues), who aspires to escape the slum by becoming a photographer. His life touches that of Liíl Ze, (Leandro Firmino da Hora), who already as a child strives towards the success and status that a gun and crime will bring him. The film charts the rites of passage for both boys. Liíl Ze becomes the most powerful man in the slum who spreads his own disrespect for life like a contagion. Rocket seeks to escape in another way.

Most of the actors that Meirelles used were untrained and from the same ghettos the film portrays. The result is stunning, savage and never seems less than authentic.

Such a film could descend into either a depressing counting of lost souls or just so much gun porn. The quality of the story telling ensures that it does neither. The film could have spouted the “good man turns to violence to destroy evil” nonsense that will be with us again this spring in Martin Scorsese’s The Gangs of New York. But Meirelles avoids such easy and unrealistic plot devices. Those who seek such vengeance do not become heroes; they die. Or worse, they become what they seek to destroy.

Throughout the story Meirelles shows us flimsy threads of humanity. These sometimes lead to tragic waste. At other times Meirelles says human hope and resilience can continue. But Meirelles never suggests that within the slums humanity can triumph. The result is a brilliant piece of film making, a story told without false optimism.

Score: 9/10
Reviewer: Chris Brown

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