City of God combines the grittiness of Scorsese’s Gangs of New York with the evocative slums of Rio de Janeiro. Meirelles captures the impulsive energy of youth gangs and their savage turf wars with unerring skill.
It opens the audience to a world hitherto unseen, and conveys how these social infringements are eating the fabrics of civilized societies around the globe. It does so without exploiting or condescending, and simply looks with a passionately knowing eye at what it knows.
The Story
Five years after he burst onto the international scene with this frenetic film, Fernando Meirelles returns to the subject of Rio’s drug-fuelled favelas and reveals himself as a cinematic virtuoso. The film’s storyline crackles and depresses, exhilarates and horrifies. It exposes the natural raw energy of children who have no place to channel it other than self-destruction. The violence is horrific and real and the film never allows you to forget that it is about children and the gangsters who control their lives.
City of God presents a world that is isolated even within its own borders and left forgotten by society. The film conveys this through its visceral visual language and its breathless, exhilarating pace. Many critics have compared it to Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas but Meirelles avoids glamorizing crime. He shows how cheap life has become in these ghettoes where even the wiseguys are essentially prepubescent children.
The key to the success of the movie is its cast, primarily the kids who play the teenagers and grown men. Meirelles used open auditions and workshops to unearth dozens of non-professional actors from the favelas and encouraged them to improvise their scenes. As a result, their performances are powerful and real. They encapsulate the angst and madness of growing up in this dangerous environment and give the movie its heart.
The Characters
The film centers on a group of children who spend their lives caught between the throes of poverty and gang violence. The movie is narrated by Rocket, a young man who manages to break out of the gang culture by obtaining a camera. His efforts to document the daily horrors he witnesses are a source of pride for him and a means of escape. Eventually, his photographs are published in the local newspaper, and Rocket’s life is transformed. The film is a powerful depiction of poverty’s numerous privations. It also illustrates how people are constricted by narrow minds and vicious behavior.
City of God is an intense and harrowing depiction of urban life. The characters are well-developed and the actors do an amazing job portraying them. Despite the fact that the movie is incredibly violent, it doesn’t glorify crime or glamourize its perpetrators. The film is raw, honest and believable.
The movie has received widespread critical acclaim. It has been widely studied in universities and film schools, and has sparked discussion about social change. It has become a landmark film in Brazil and is considered one of the most important works of cinema from the country. The movie is a must-see for anyone interested in the topic of poverty and crime. It is a film that will stay with you long after you leave the theater.
The Director
Director Fernando Meirelles infused the film with his own unique vision, bringing together crime, drama, and coming-of-age elements to create a thought-provoking story. City of God drew audiences into the world of the favelas and left them with lasting impressions. Meirelles and co-director Katia Lund held auditions for the lookmovie film’s non-professional cast and encouraged them to improvise their scenes, resulting in powerful performances. The movie also features a variety of Brazilian music genres, from samba to bossa nova, adding a layer of culture and emotion to the story.
One of the reasons City of God has become such a cultural phenomenon is its realistic depiction of life in the favelas. It shows the people living in poverty not as blameless victims of society, but rather as people who chose to live their lives in a violent and dangerous environment. It also presents criminals as human beings with the potential for good or evil. The scene in which Li’l Dice, a tiny kid, plans to rob and murder everyone in a brothel is truly terrifying.
Many critics have called the film a South American Goodfellas, but it is a little unfair to compare it to such a classic. While City of God does borrow Scorsese’s canny editing and the episodic flashback structure, it has its own distinctive style. And, of course, it boasts a jabbering psychotic villain every bit as compelling as Joe Pesci’s Tommy.
The Audience
In City of God, Fernando Meirelles takes viewers into the slums and favelas that comprise much of Rio de Janeiro. There, life is lived at a frenetic pace. The drug trade, murder, and gang wars are the order of the day. The violence is intrinsically linked to poverty, and it’s not uncommon for armed prepubescent children to join the gang warfare. It’s a world where the odds are stacked against you and it takes incredible strength, bravery and good luck to survive.
Meirelles has crafted a film that is intensely gripping and emotionally cathartic. He combines impressive filmmaking craftsmanship with an outstanding script to tell an unforgettable story about a place that God forgot. However, it’s also an undeniably brutal piece of work.
It doesn’t glamorize crime but it does offer an unflinching look at the deadly consequences of gangland rivalry. The movie has drawn comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s ‘Goodfellas’ but Meirelles’s approach is quite different.
Instead of letting the audience wallow in blood and guts for two hours, Meirelles provides moments of levity that give the movie a balance that keeps it from becoming unbearably bleak. One such vignette follows Rocket as he tries to decide whether he should publish the picture of the corrupt cops and become famous or take pictures of Lil’ Ze and earn himself an internship at the newspaper.
