Mini Review City of God

Rating: 8/10 (15 October 2018)

City of God is a beautiful telling of the story about Brazil's citizens, a photographer, and those who wanted to be the Lords in the City of God. It starts with a beautiful scene with people enjoying a party and making chicken. It is shot so that the humans seem almost savage and the audience beings to sympathize with the chicken that seems to know what is going on. In one sweeping move the chicken seems to out-think the humans and escapes. This is not done as most vegetarian commercials would, the audience does not empathize with the chicken, instead it flips the script and out maneuvers the humans, until it leads them to where they meet the main character. This movie does more showing than telling; in this instance, it shows the villain through the action-filled cinematography. The movie begins at this point, but this point is actually the end of the movie. Little motifs like this let the story come full circle without seeming repetitive. When a scene is first shown it tells one side of the story and when it comes back it shows you the other side, bringing the scene full circle. That means that the mise-en-scene has to be done perfectly, otherwise the scene is first shown it would expose too much.
Another fascinating aspect is that the movie's narrator is not in every scene, however he narrates the whole movie. Letting other people's points of view be shown allows the audience to learn more about the movie without having to be told every detail, and this is done though the fact that the narrator does not reveal all aspects of the story. Similarly to these motifs I also do not want to give too much away; I believe you should see this movie because it takes a basic story line and does not end the way you may expect. Based on a true story this movie is too good to pass up.