City
of God is a brilliant production by a team of Brazillian filmakers
and writers that combine to tell the saga of a whole nation. And
it is an important one at that. The urban legends surrounding crime
and violence in Brazil's cities has been slowly leaking into the
western press for years. And most who pay some attention to the
news have some idea about crime in the streets of Brazil. But this
film really puts a face on the cliche and tells the story in a way
the media never could.
City
of God is also a very slick, professional production. Years ahead
of many of Latin American films in this aspect. The sets used for
the early chilhood scenes set in Rio's slums at the end of the 60s
are artistic reproductions on a near hollywood scale, that poignantly
re-create the empty urban wasteland of the projects around the time
of their creation. The camera work and editing is brilliant, adding
all the slick effects of an american film, as well as an artistic
angle you might expect more from european cinema. And the story
is presented thru a group of characters who grow up in the projects,
and are introduced to the audience with cool titles and short episodes
that bounce back and forth thru their lives and the early years
of Rio's ghetto like a Torrentino film or a hip new english gangster
flick. Again, not what you would expect from an artistic Latin American
film.
This
film is almost as entertaining as it is important, tho it is equally
intense, and necessarily violent. The almost constant flow of violence
is not, however, particularly graphic--offensive more in thought
than in vision, but that is the whole point of the story: its kids
killing kids in a way no american ghetto could really imagine. At
the same time the filmakers give the movie a very human touch and
keep it entertaining by weaving in humorous and even romantic episodes
thruout.
The
film grows with the main characters who all die off one by one as
they become increasingly involved in drug trafficking and gang warfare
until, in the end, remains only the one characters who chose the
camera over the gun and lived to leak his images to the Brazillian
Press, where the true story of The City of God was finally told.
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