One Of The Best Movies Ever

Rating: Null/10 (9 November 2004)

Few films I have ever seen have managed to capture the essence of society's oft-lamented yet never-resolved problems of illegal drug trafficking and the rampant street crime as depicted in the City Of God in Brazil, as shown to us through the remarkably unskewed viewpoint of its many colorful real-life street characters. Of course the street-urchins recruited to play the roles of certain individuals now scattered in time have become first-time actors as a result of this astounding motion picture, and the characters they portray are brought to vivid, realistic life on the big screen in a manner that will captivate audiences from beginning to end, despite its rather long running time. (__-?) The process of sitting through this depiction of inner-slum street gangs and how one generation picks up the business of the older one that leaves it behind for them, is nothing short of revelatory. I thoroughly enjoyed Scorcese's Gangs Of New York, but I will say this: City Of God makes GONY look out to be but child's play. For one thing, Fernando Meirelles utilizes a nonfiction canvas with which to illustrate certain points that Scorcese utilized fictional conventions to get across. In Scorcese's depiction of violence, we are nearly saturated with violence almost for the sake of violence, a sort of hyped-up ultra violence that drives these kinds of gangster-pics, and which might very well repel a certain demographic of viewers who just don't care for that sort of aesthetic. In Meirelles stark and up-close depiction of the real-life dangerous goings-on of certain groups of street gangs, the violence carries with it the reflection of truth, and despite even being possibly more extreme, it can be accepted more as a fact of life or somehow manages to become easier to digest, if not flinch away from. CoG makes GoNY look like child's play, and that's ironic seeing as how it is children which take up the mantle and carry on the business which the older generation leaves for them. I walked out of City Of God a changed man - a refreshed man, that is, because it reminds you just how stark and real this whole business of the natural order of things is. And conversely, just how real the whole nature of the order of business is. Sit down behind the camera lens and allow yourself to be transformed as our young true hero guides you through this City Of God and shows you just how comfortably you sit there in the theatre contemplating it. Do not miss this transcendental film. Open your eyes and see through the lens of a child. Watch how this child grows up and passes through the necessary rituals to become a man. Ask yourself what it is this man has shown you through his eyes. And do not close your eyes to what is going on around you ever again.