City of God view from a film studies student **SPOILERS**

Rating: 10/10 (16 October 2017)

The City of God weaves about five different stories together into an on screen masterpiece. One would think that with that many separate plots the overall story would be lost or hard to understand but that is not the case with this film. The directors use parallel editing and flash backs to help tell the story of each individual character and how they fit into the bigger plot. This could be confusing but the directors use a narrator to help keep the stories straight. Even though this is a film with different stories no character is left undeveloped. Each story is told in the same environment of the other stories, with characters from different stories interacting with each other. This allows the audience to make a strong connection with each character, even if it's not their story. The film is also shot using a lot of close ups, this helps the audience with their connection as it puts them in the personal space of each character. The stories told however are not light stories, all involve the use of drugs, sex, and gang violence, with children taking part in all activates. The movie manages to desensitize the audience to these things though, as it wants to give a feel of what the characters have to live with every day. During some of the darker scenes the lighting is actually fairly bright and the music is upbeat, this assists with the desensitization. To help the audience feel more involved and apart of the story the film is shot with mainly a hand held camera, this physically puts them in the stories, and not as if just viewing it. Overall I would highly recommend this film to anyone, it keeps your interest the whole time, gives you a view into a life that is completely different then here, and by the end of the film you will realize how the cycle continues.