459 - City of God, Brazil, 2002. Dir. Fernando Merelles.
The title is City of God. The cover shows a girl and a boy sitting in bathing suits on the beach, looking as though they are in love, looking out to sea.
Ah, what a nice romantic drama this will be.
Hmm.
Or maybe not.
Let us just say that the movie's title and the cover art might just be a bit . . . ironic.
City of God is the name of the slum in which our protagonists live. Built by the city of Rio de Janeiro. Known as Cidade de Deus in Portuguese. Slum in Portuguese is favela.
The film follows the lives of many young people who grow up in City of God, who become hoods, who rob, form gangs, establish turfs, process and distribute drugs, kill, pay off the locals, pay off the police, and finally engage in an all out slum-wide war.
One could sum up the film in two words.
Everybody dies.
Well, one person lives. The one whose work causes us to know the story in the first place. One of the boys, Buscape, whom we know as Rocket, falls in love with photography. He starts taking pictures. By accident his first one gets published. The press learns about the turf wars at the favela. The story breaks. Authorities respond. Rocket becomes a journalist.
He is the one who escapes.
The film is based on a true story, as reported by the real Rocket. The character Rocket is our narrator.
The film is at once vigorous and difficult. Sometimes exceedingly difficult. As when you see children killing children. Without remorse.
But it is attempting to tell the truth about what really happened. And without comment. Just the facts.
Just when you begin to connect with a character and like him, he dies, and you have to move on to another one. Some characters are hard to connect with in the first place.
Sometimes they have a look of joy on their faces. As if this is life. Dealing and killing.
The filmmaking is exceedingly contemporary. Hand-held camera. Moving camera. Quick cutting. Constantly wracking focus. A plethora of images. Changes in lighting mid-scene.
When watching, you will get to know a lot of characters. Most of whom experience little of life and realize little potential before being gunned down.
A few make it for a time and live a kind of big life, relatively speaking, and then it all comes to end.
This is a Shakespearean tragedy for the 21st century.
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