movie's 411

>> CITY OF GOD | cidade de deus (2002)

Starring: Matheus Nachtergaele, Alexandre Rodrigues, and more ...
Director: Fernando Meirelles, Katia Lund
Genre: Action Drama, Foreign Language & Int'l




"city of god" churns with furious energy as it plunges into the story of the slum gangs of rio de janeiro. breathtaking and terrifying, urgently involved with its characters, it announces a new director of great gifts and passions: fernando meirelles. remember the name. the name is in the same pool with peter jackson, sophia coppola, peter heir & clint eastwood in this year's academic nomination for "best director" for this movie. the film has been compared with scorsese's "GoodFellas," and it deserves the comparison. scorsese's film began with a narrator who said that for as long as he could remember he wanted to be a gangster. the narrator of this film seems to have had no other choice.

the movie takes place in slums constructed by Rio to isolate the poor people from the city center. they have grown into places teeming with life, color, music and excitement--and also with danger, for the law is absent and violent gangs rule the streets. as the film opens, aspiring photojournalist rocket is positioned precisely between a group of criminals and a group of cops. a camera hangs around his neck, and you can sense his indecision: should he get out of the line of fire, or record what's about to happen?

as the camera whirls around him, the background changes and rocket shrinks from a teenager into a small boy, playing soccer in a housing development outside rio. to understand his story, he says, we have to go back to the beginning, the famous tender trio and began their lives of what some would call crime and others would call survival.

the technique of that shot--the whirling camera, the flashback, the change in colors from the dark brightness of the slum to the dusty sunny browns of the soccer field--alert us to a movie that is visually alive and inventive as few films are. "city of god" is a brilliant examination of how the collapse of the social machine brings about flawed substitutes that almost -- but not quite -- re-create the workings of an orderly society. it's also funny: a sequence in which rocket has decided to embark on a life of crime but ultimately can't because all his potential victims are "cool" is a perfect seesaw of tension and comedy. and there's no shortage of violence, either: little zé is flat-out fearsome, and the prospect of immediate death at the well-armed hands of feral, foolish children is omnipresent in the film.

meirelles began as a director of TV commercials, which gave him a command of technique--and, he says, trained him to work quickly, to size up a shot and get it, and move on. working with the cinematographer cesar charlone, he uses quick-cutting and a mobile, hand-held camera to tell his story with the haste and detail it deserves. sometimes those devices can create a film that is merely busy, but "city of god" feels like sight itself, as we look here and then there, with danger or opportunity everywhere.

meirelles shot in the actual "city of god" -- with the permission of the local drug lords -- and with a cast of mostly non-actor residents... kinda remind me of indonesian's "daun di atas bantal" only with more criminal acts with guns. the film he ended up with is thrilling and exciting, but it's haunting, too. you may be rocked back in your seat by the sheer moviemaking power while you're in the theater, but you'll walk away thinking about the film's ideas and wondering just why it is that wrong can thrive in the absence of any sense of right.

as rocket narrates the lore of the district he knows so well, we understand that poverty has undermined all social structures in the "city of god", including the family. the gangs provide structure and status. because the gang death rate is so high, even the leaders tend to be surprisingly young, and life has no value except when you are taking it. there is an astonishing sequence when a victorious gang leader is killed in a way he least expects, by the last person he would have expected, and we see that essentially he has been killed not by a person but by the culture of crime.

yet the film is not all grim and violent. rocket also captures some of the dickensian flavor of the "city of god", where a riot of life provides ready-made characters with nicknames, personas and trademarks. some like benny (phelipe haagensen) -- the cool hood -- are so charismatic they almost seem to transcend the usual rules. others, like knockout ned and lil ze, grow from kids into fearsome leaders, their words enforced by death.

the movie is based on a novel by paulo lins, who grew up in the "city of god", somehow escaped it, and spent eight years writing his book. a note at the end says it is partly based on the life of wilson rodriguez, a brazilian photographer. we watch as rocket obtains a camera that he treasures and takes pictures from his privileged position as a kid on the streets. he gets a job as an assistant on a newspaper delivery truck, asks a photographer to develop his film, and is startled to see his portrait of an armed gang leader on the front page of the paper.

"city of god" does not exploit or condescend, does not pump up its stories for contrived effect, does not contain silly and reassuring romantic sidebars, but simply looks, with a passionately knowing eye, at what it knows.

this is a very well made movie. definately worth seeing. even though it covers three decades in time it all has purpose. the violence is somewhat disturbing where they take lives as easy as flipping the palm of their hand, but the violence is so much a part of the story and a part of life to the characters. also it is not over the top or done in bad taste. what i loved about this film is that there is never a dull moment. it portrays a side of brazil we're not usually exposed to here in america (and besides, i've always loved the language! pengen belajar portuguese deh..). i left the theater feeling so many emotions at once. if i had to describe this movie in three words it would be: exciting, mesmerizing and captivating.

[info taken from different reviews, mostly from roger ebert's for sun times and james rocchi's for netflix]


>> rated by :: sLesTa | [ ]

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