Released: January 17th,
2003
Rated: R
Distributor: Miramax
Starring: Alexandre Rodrigues, Alice Braga, Leandro
Firmino, Phellipe Haagensen, Matheus Nachtergaele, Seu Jorge
Directed by: Fernando Meirelles,
Kátia Lund
Written by: Bráulio Mantovani
Personal Bias Alert: likes intersecting narratives, hasn’t seen many Brazilian films
7.5 of 10
Most
of us, thankfully, will never experience life as the characters in City of God do. Relegated to a slum outside Rio de Janeiro,
they must fight and claw for the things they have and are given little
opportunity to better themselves. Their
lives are violent and short, seemingly predestined to end in tragedy,
especially when a lucrative but dangerous career in drug dealing is the most readily
available avenue.
City of God is loosely based on the
rising drug wars in the titular slum from the ‘60s to the ‘80s, tracking a
young man nicknamed Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues) as he tries to avoid the life
(and death) swirling around him. The
story is all crime epic, following his various acquaintances as their businesses,
relationships, and statuses shift over the long period we are with them. Even larger than the characters is the City
of God itself, always sprawling out around them, swallowing their pain and
ambition and chewing them up in its seemingly endless machinations. The city is a personification of their
circumstance, and those who tango with it too long are bound to never leave the
dance floor.
If City
of God is sounding hopelessly dark, then good, it’s meant to, but directors
Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund never let you wallow in it. They keep the film moving swiftly through the
violence and turmoil by quite literally keeping the camera moving. It jostles and shakes, often taking the point
of view of a bystander or a character on the fringes of this mad world. In a way, they’re relegating the audience to
the same eavesdropping role that Rocket is playing. We get to observe, but we never get too
close. That distance is what saves the
film from becoming a chore. If it had
gone too dark, then no one would have watched it. As is, it skirts in the shadows, never lying
to us about the realities of a world that really does exist but never
demonizing the people caught up in it.
A
sprawling, ambitious look at such a complex world is rarely pulled off
seamlessly, and City of God is guilty
of pushing its scope a bit too far. A
few too many narrative offshoots are followed, which I’m sure were intended to
thicken the world-building but mostly come off as tangential. Rocket is lost for long periods of the film,
and you’re left wondering at times what the point of all of this will be. This lack of focus persists throughout the
film, which robs the entire film of some momentum and the ending of some
luster. The great epics are sprawling in
scope but tight in narrative, delivering a succinct message with an air of
gravitas. City of God is loose in almost all aspects, and because of that its
observations on cyclical violence lands with a bit of a thud.
There is a sense, however, that this feeling
was intentional. The directors went out
of their way to cast non-actors, many of whom were picked up from real-life
slums, and to shoot as near as possible to the real City of God. These choices lend the film an easy air of
authenticity, but the directing duo seem to have gotten lost a bit in their
quest for realism. As thrilling as it is
to feel that a foreign world is so being captured so completely, this film
seemed to be shooting for a larger message that they only halfway found.
Other
Notes:
Ø This
is very much in that early ‘00s style of expansive, intersecting narratives.
Ø Both
directors, after their brief moment in the spotlight following the release of
this film, have seen their careers fade to video on demand releases (Meirelles)
or outright stagnation (Lund).
Ø If
you didn’t see Benny’s arc coming, then you haven’t watched many crime films.
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