Stunning movie

Rating: 10/10 (6 October 2019)

The City of God is the movie that fulfills with camera technique, unique choice of color, fast storyline, sharp editing, and memorable soundtrack. Even though many actors in these films was an amateur actor but César Charlone (cinematographer) uses his camera technique to help the character to shine in this film. Right at the beginning of the movie a scene after chicken chase, Rocket (Main Character) was standing in the middle between Liz Ze Gangster and the Police. César Charlone uses handheld camera movement circular around Rocket from the low angle in a fast motion before a cut and transition to Rocket childhood story. I think this is one of the best flashback transitions I have seen. The tone of color in this film considered very vividly. At the beginning of the film, the tone that is used was light blue, surrounded by tall concrete buildings. Then after the transition, Rocket's childhood story color tone was light brown/yellow given a warm feeling. Since the flashbacks, if looked at this film closely, when the story progresses the color tone slowly transition from light to dark. The scene when Benny was being shot, when a high camera angle and a long shot was used, the tone of the setting was considered grey to black. This film was using a powerful scene right at the beginning that creating a reflecting on the people of Cidade de Deus. This movie will circle and meet the first scene at the end of the movie. In the beginning, the chicken is running away from the people because it saw its friend being killed. The chicken decides to runways as fast as possible without looking back. The chicken symbolizes the people in Cidade de Deus, there are only two choices to choose from, to join the gang and be killed or runaways as far as possible. Rocket choose to run away to pursue his photographer career but he did not run far enough, eventually, he ends up back at the city. This film speaks for itself, the story that people avoid to talk about has spoken through this film.