As we have continued along this project, we’ve begun to notice that there aren’t any international films taking home the ‘Best Picture’ trophy. While we’re reviewing the main winners then, we’ve decided to recognise some of the most famous non-English speaking pieces every three weeks, continuing with the 2002 gang epic City of God.
Plot Intro
“Rocket” (Alexandre Rodrigues) is a young boy born into the Cidade de Deus suburb of Rio de Janeiro. As he grows up, he fosters an ambition to be a photographer. But he is surrounded by gang wars, betrayals and drug dealers that prevent him from escaping the cycle of violence he born into, particularly the activities led by psychopathic Li’l Ze (Leandro Firmino). Rocket narrates his life through a series of interconnected tales set in this suburb, and his eventual achievement of his dream.
Paul says...
Shameless plug alert, but I have recently bestowed unto this blog its own Twitter profile (@anightattheoscars), on which I have been networking from time to time with other film nerds, one of which recommended City of God to me as part of our foreign-language movie tangents. This fast and furious account of gang activity in Brazil is based on a novel by Paulo Lins, who was himself born in the Cidade de Deus but managed to escape it to become a successful writer. So not only is much of the film’s events based in fact, but most of the actors were amateurs who lived in slums, hired to achieve authenticity. Support groups were set up after the movie was completed to try and ensure that these budding actors had the option of leaving their violence-ridden poverty for good.
And personally, I think this is an excellent piece of work. It succeeded in totally transporting me into the Brazilian favelas. Directors Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund have edited the entire two hours with a frantic, fast-paced tone. They capture the terror, the thrill and the tragedy of life in the City of God. They manage to convey huge amounts of action and event in a very short space of time. Some events happening at the same time are told concurrently through 24-style split screen, and some events that are happening in totally different time periods are spliced together to show how huge consequences can be - and deliver some of the plot’s most surprising twists with absolute relish. We’ve watched a lot of movies in this project that feel longer than they are due to sheer sluggishness. This film felt longer than it is due to its intensely speedy storytelling. On our first toilet break, I was convinced that over an hour had past, but we were only 45 minutes in, just because so much had happened. This is a great compliment because I found myself wanting to discover more stories from this world that I know virtually nothing about.
The film also succeeds in being gritty and sometimes horrifying, but without becoming arduous or gratuitous in its violence. In fact, the violence (and there is a lot of it) adds to the atmosphere. Some critics have complained about the repetitive nature of the story. Admittedly, it is just a seemingly endless string of revenge killings. But then, that’s just what life in these areas is- a seemingly endless string of revenge killings. The main gang war at the centre of the plot is a result of the villain, Li’l Ze’s, insecurity about his looks when a woman shirks him off for a better looking guy; the police are seen to be not helping the situation but provoking it by arresting whoever they can find or accepting bribes; and the film ends with a group of children (some as young as 4 or 5) forming a new weapon-laden gang in place of the old one. These relentless atrocities led to me feeling desensitised to it all. I wasn’t shocked by the new child-led gang, I felt tired and accepting of it, much like the residents of this very suburb who have resigned themselves to their fate.
City of God has also been criticised for not providing much in the way of Brazilian social commentary. There’s some reference to the fact that men and women turn to gangs because they get far more job security and wealth from them than an honest living, but the film is more interested in the actions and internal struggles of the gangs. Admittedly, this would have given the film a much bigger dimension, but then I would argue that the directors intended us to see Brazil from the point of view of these people who live and die within these sweaty, bullet-laden, wild-west-style districts. This is not an observational movie, this is an immersive piece of drama. And I found it thoroughly captivating.
Highlight
A very distressing scene in which the main villain exacts revenge on a child gang. He holds two children, visibly under 10, at gun point, and asks them to choose between being shot in the hand or the foot. They choose their hands- so he shoots their feet. Then asks one of his gang members to kill one of them anyway.
Lowlight
Whilst I was gripped by the film, I found that I didn’t feel much sadness when even the “good” characters die (and I use good in the loosest sense of the word bearing in mind everyone’s a criminal except the narrator). This is a minor quibble because the twists and turns in the plot kept me on the edge of my seat.
Mark
10/10
Lowlight
Doug says...
A critic described this film as ‘kinetic’, and that’s exactly it. Two hours rushes past in a frenzy of lighting, angles, and quick character appearances and deaths. Within half an hour we are resigned to most of the characters dying, and deaths are shown with little to no importance or gravitas. This is a gritty tale of life in the roughest of Brazilian favelas, and there’s no shirking of the very real possibility of young death.
The acting isn’t particularly astonishing, but this is a film where that doesn’t actually matter, because the whole thing is really a masterstroke of direction. Directors Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund cover scenes rapidly, showing two different angles of the same scene on split-screen to quickly convey all the information you need to know. They also play fast and loose with chronology, pausing to go on quick tangents to explain a certain character’s backstory or in one memorable case the history of a room. The latter is a scene focused on from many angles, first telling it from the perspective of the narrator, then telling the history of the room (a drug dealer’s den), then telling it from the owner’s perspective (and filling us in on his history), and then finally the perspective of the intruder (and giving us his backstory and answering one of the mysteries the film had already set up). It’s a dazzling, dizzying way of telling a story and means you get a load of information rapidly in a way that’s easy to pick up on and digest.
Halfway through the film we paused to make a cup of tea and I wandered through our London flat. For a moment, the white walls of our hallway seemed quite unreal, and I had the odd sensation of not being in a real place. That’s a testament to how absorbing and real this film is. It sucks you in entirely. And when Rocket goes to the newspaper offices, clean and white with bright lighting and obviously wealthier surroundings, it feels jarring, a world away from the bright, bloody streets of the villages.
Ultimately it felt a little bit too dark. The opening scenes often have a touch of humour mixed into the constant tragedy and death, and while an argument about this reflecting the Brazilian life is easily made, I believe we find humour in any life - it’s part of being human. I’d be surprised if these people never laughed, even in the favelas. But the cyclical nature of the narrative is heartbreaking in its truthfulness. Rocket gets out, and gets ahead, but the gang of young kids who pass by him, waving their guns and planning who to kill first, end the film and by doing so Meirelles and Lund make the believable point that most people in this cycle will die there - and probably quite young.
Highlight
The moment when they tell the same story from three angles, and even fit in a history of the location, is a masterstroke of film-making. It’s not something you see often, and when done well it’s hugely satisfying.
Lowlight
Even the darkest of situations will have a little more humour mixed in with the tragedy.
Mark
10/10
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