City of God (Cidade de Deus)    

  

Directed by Kátia Lund and Fernando Meirelles

 

Written by Paulo Lins (novel) and Bráulio Mantovani (screenplay)

 

Starring Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino da Hora and Phellipe Haagensen

 

Rated R for strong brutal violence, sexuality, drug content and language.

130 minutes run time

 

Although a work of fiction, “City of God” is shot in a documentary style that takes the audience right into the middle of the tough slums of Rio de Janeiro.  Based on a true story and set in the ghetto housing development ironically named the “City of God,” the story begins with the raucous music of steel drums and chatter of a street party that turns bloody.  A chicken is killed for the pot, but the second gets away; the chase is on, through the maze of unmarked trails that form the streets of the ghetto.  Will the chicken escape the pot?  The odds are against it, but, fate intervenes.

 

Cut to the “Tender Trio,” a haphazard gang of teenagers pulling small stick-ups and dreaming of bigger things.  Right from the start, the presence of firearms is overwhelming; all the more so for their stark presentation.  It’s the quality of the guns that makes the difference.  They are not the stylized sleek and clean instruments of destruction that are featured in the glossy cops and robbers stories of the mass cinema.  The guns are dirty and ill-defined, corroded with the rust and filth of the ghetto, like the clothes of the protagonists.  The guns travel from hand to unsure hand, too dirty to have identities; all variations of the Saturday night special.  Good for only one thing, to kill people, and to kill them up close and personal.

 

The streets are dirt and the characters alternate between being in complete control and running for their lives.  The cops have no time for civil rights and the kids have no time to feel sorry for death and suffering they cause.  The dirt of the streets soaks up the blood of the victims and by morning life goes on; everybody one day older and one day closer to death.

 

Two young boys are a part of the pack of street urchins that orbits around the Tender Trio, doing small chores for them and trying to absorb some of their machismo by osmosis.  One is Buscapé (or “Rocket” to his friends) played by Luis Otávio, the other is Dadinho (“Little Dice”) played by Douglas Silva.  As a prison staffer friend of mine once said, “Some of these guys really had to work to get here, but for others it just came naturally.”  Rocket can’t understand the life of crime the Tender Trio has chosen, even though is brother is one of them.  He wants to do something other than die like an insect in the wasteland of the ghetto, but he can’t figure out what it is.  Little Dice, on the other hand, grasps his first pistol at age twelve like it was long-lost friend.  It’s only near the end of the movie that we learn what he did with it on that first night; how he used it with an instinctive blood-lust that knew no age.

 

Rocket narrates the story of the boys who made it big as criminals in the City of God.  The story consists of several major interlocking plots and dozens of minor ones that are developed in a semi-chronological order.  Some add materially to the story and some don’t, just as some lives go on and some don’t.  The plots that dead end describe the day-to-day life in the ghetto, the confusing and brutal game of survival.  The characters in the film are children, adolescents and young adults, and the movie traces their development as the younger follow the older.  Sometimes the younger outdo the older, and sometimes they die before they can take the next step.  The tracing of the characters through these three stages mimics the conventional epic where children are born, age and die.  But in the City of God these kids never get old.  Their life expectancy is the mid-20s.  By the time they reach 25 they have made too many enemies and their enemies have too much to gain by taking their place.  The odds slowly tilt against them.  There is no place to hide.

 

As Rocket and Little Dice grow into young adulthood, Alexandre Rodrigues takes over the role of Rocket and Little Dice morphs into Zé Pequeno, played by Leandro Firmino da Hora.  Zé has developed into a mature sociopath who is right at home with mob rule.  His best friend, and the only stabilizing force in his life, is Bené, played by Phellipe Haagensen, described by his fellow gangsters as “the coolest hood in the City of God.”  At this point the trio of the main characters is complete.  Rocket shifts in and out of the scenes, trying to figure an angle, and finally getting it in the last half of the movie, Zé goes from one impossibly reckless situation to the next and Bené tries to balance his gangster life with his “love child” mentality.

 

A gang war ensues and the older boys recruit new street urchins, give them beat up, barely functional guns to get them started, and the cycle starts all over again.  Some of the young kill the older boys on orders, some kill for revenge.  In one scene that is emblematic of the impact of the plot, a young initiate is forced to torture an even younger child in order to terrorize him and his fellows into falling into line.  And so, the cycle repeats itself, the young growing up and dying young.  One of the last scenes of the movie repeats one of the first scenes, completing the story of an endless cycle.  But Rocket shows us that escape is possible, although hard to plan.  His salvation coming via an artistic talent and a break from a most unlikely direction.

 

Directors Lund and Meirelles do a tremendous job in capturing the helter-skelter life of one of the most dangerous ghettos in the world.  The filming is spare and very realistic and there is almost no soundtrack to distract the audience from the rapidly switching scenes.  The film is in Portuguese, with sub-titles.  But after the first few scenes the sub-titles just seem to go immediately into the brain, without reading.  The lines are direct and simple.  The pictures tell most of the story.  The overall effect of a sense of impending disaster and barely controlled panic is reminiscent of Franka Potente’s performance in “Run Lola Run”(and her only slightly lesser performance with Matt Damon in “The Bourne Identity”).  The directors, in telling their story with well crafted and very entertaining multiple plots, do not wilt in comparison to even Tarantino and Lee.

 

This movie is a prize of realism and earns every bit of its “R” rating.  But the skill and honesty of its telling make it a show not to be missed.