Easily One of the Best Films of All-Time

Rating: 10/10 (30 August 2016)

They would never make this film in America.
I don't mean that it's too sexual or too violent for American filmmakers and filmgoers, though it would be unusual to see an American filmmaking, which fetishizes both topics, be so frank about them.
I mean that it's too real to be an American film.
I don't mean it's real like Boyhood. That's a different kind of real. American films are, by their nature, full of posture and preening. That's not inherently negative, but it prevents the kinds of conditions that created this film, a steady, unflinching, inward-pointed look at Rio's worst favela, Cidade de Deus, the City of God.
American films' desire to take themselves so seriously often gets in their own way. They are often boring and monotonous. This film, while showcasing some of the most serious and dark themes out there, is tremendously entertaining. It can be fun. It can be energetic. It can be delightful. It knows when to go dark and when to explode into color.
More than anything, it is captivating. Nothing is predictable, thanks in large part to the film's structure, which alongside Casino is proof that great films can be structured around narration. Actually, Casino is a great film to compare this to. Both films take place over relatively the same amount of time. Both films are about cesspools of corruption and violence, though one cesspool is obviously richer than the other. Both films feature a lot of cursing and explicit violence. Both films feature betrayal and paranoia. Both films feature astonishing grasp of cinematic wizardry. Both films end on relatively quiet final notes.
One's about rich Vegas mobsters, and the other's about poor Rio gangsters, but they have a lot in common, not that you would notice that while you're watching either film. They feel fundamentally different, not least because the Scorsese flick is intoxicatingly introverted and psychological, while this film is punishingly vast and open. It reminds me of Slumdog Millionaire in a way, though with all due respect to the incredibly talented Danny Boyle, this is the better film by far. More than that, though, it reminds me of a classic adventure movie mashed up with a 90's- early 00's action movie, like a perverse, distorted Lord of the Rings/ The Fast and the Furious crossover.
MM:FR contrasted its frenetic action and pace with a linear story. It's a grand antithesis that is a big reason why that film works so well. This film, with its propelling but non-frenetic action, is free to zip around the entire narrative space. Casino did not take advantage of the fact that its structure allowed it to double back and go on tangents. Scorsese, despite or perhaps because of his detailed background in film, stuck close to the playbook. I like to think of it as a limo driving crosscountry down the highway.
City of God, meanwhile, is more like a truck swiveling and swerving down back roads. The opening scene is not the only occasion where the filmmakers take liberties with the timeline of the film. In fact, these liberties form the majority of the first two acts. The film sets up the framework for this right after the first scene, where it essentially argues 'If you want to understand X, you have to understand Y, and if you want to understand Y, you have to understand Z, so we're starting at Z.' But it does not proceed from Z to Y to X. During the Z storyline, the narrator, our protagonist, Rocket, might point out that W is important and come back to it after the film finished storyline Z.
Conventionally speaking, this sounds like a recipe for disaster, but it turns out brilliant. The narrative structure is far better assembled and more interesting than almost any other film, proving that often, the unconventional way is the best way. The same can be said for the film's masterful editing and cinematography.
The early 2000's were a gold mine for visual craft, producing the most beautiful-looking movies of all time, including the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Amelie, which not coincidentally are the only two films I would say look better than City of God. But in a way, it's even more beautiful than those movies, which are often pretty in the same way a painting is pretty. This is pretty in a way that only a film can be, in a way that cannot be fully scene from just looking at screenshots.
This film has a wide variety of showstopper scenes, scenes where plot, character, and craft come together to create a spectacle the likes of which I have never seen before. The greatest of these comes at the end of the second act, at a crazy party that is extremely 70's, extremely Brazilian, and extremely entertaining. As a film critic, I knew something was going to go wrong, but I was shocked and awed by what happened. The visual craft during this sequence is haunting. Thanks to the strobe lights, it is like reality itself is blinking in and out of existence.
After that scene, the film's structure changes, and it settles into its final act. It stops jumping around so frequently. The color fades away, and it becomes an urban war film akin to The Hurt Locker and Mockingjay- Part 2. Bombs go off. Good intentions are squandered. Lives are lost by the bucketload.
There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
There is only darkness.
There is only war.
There is only the City of God.