Cidade De Deus (City of God) | Review

Film will definitely not promote Brazil’s tourism industry, but will endorse the excellent filmmaking from Latin America.

This is the type of picture that has the equivalent affect of a medicine ball hitting your gut when you weren’t looking. With pure docu-drama reality rawness, Fernando Meirelles’ Cidade de Deus (City of God) makes for a fascinating exposé, especially for those who thought that the kids from South America were innocently kicking around soccer balls.

Think of this film as a Stand by Me account of a fairly large group of boys with a continual Pulp Fiction shift in narrative punctuated by a Dirty Harry ambiance shown with the disturbingly real-looking gratuitous violence that would intimidate any unsuspecting audiences. This reality check is a factual portrait of the vicious cycle of suburb slum hell which makes Taxi Driver seem like an easy rollercoaster ride.

Based on a book adaptation of the novel by the same name, Meirelles’ narrative is split into two acts. The first act commences with a texturized sand-colored story about three inseparable youths growing up in the 60’s and who are up to no good. They get involved in a life-altering situation that will result in their life becoming as meaningful as a name on a championship trophy with a layer of dust on it. The cross-over into the next act shows how the spirit of these big brothers are found in the new batch of kids, which have grown up as a gun-toting generation of hoodlums who have completely stamped out their Sesame street values for the drug trade business and the subsequent territorial retribution and eventual full-scale war.

Forget about the high body counts, this account brilliantly digs deep into the mind and environment of these kids, who are debatably good at the core. This breeding ground for kids with street names such as Lil’ Dice make for many of the bad apples, but excluded from this bunch is the film’s hero, named Rocket who is presented to the viewer as the only one who can escape the madness. As the narrator he takes us through the timeline of violence and gives us the lowdown of the setting and unlike thjose who shot with 35mm hand guns, his escape is by shooting with a 35mm camera.

Meirelles’ film is eloquently told with his resonating filmmaking style that reminds of the jumpy-crazy cinematography and fast-paced editing of Amores Perros and also includes a catchy eye-candy freeze-frame intro inspired by a famous shot in The Matrix. The scariest part of this picture is that this is far from being over-dramatized, the pure brutality, the desperation and particularly the violence will leave you emotionally drained, especially with one scene that see a child have to pick whether his hand or foot will take his next body bullet wound.

The many characters and the numerous stories of first loves, disco 70’s puppy love and kung-fu fighters give the film a likeability factor and the ending screams out the bigger culprits in social injustices. The fact that the film used a cast of non-professional actors by having actual ghetto kids enroll in the project showed that their acting wasn’t much of a stretch from their urban reality, which plays an even bigger social role after the box-office closes up.

This is an accomplishment in contemporary cinema, a fascinating portrayal of a Brazil that no one knows and unfortunately the voting Academy members haven’t the faintest idea of the value of such a film. I originally saw City of God during the Montreal World film festival, and six months later I’m still blown away by the sheer impact of viewing such a powerful film.

Viewed in original language with English subtitles.

Rating 4.5 stars