Excellent film!

Rating: 10/10 (17 October 2018)

Fernando Meirelles & Kátia Lund's film City of God is a truly fascinating film that deeply & poignantly displays the cycle of poverty & crime in the impoverished slums near Rio de Janeiro from the 60's to 80's. Displaying large volumes of emotional turmoil, this film speaks to the entrapment of people in a repetitive cycle of violence and despair by showing us the brutality and violence of what they experience on a daily basis. Primarily through the storytelling of the lead character Rocket we are invited to witness how the shameless drug lords running his city, along with the help of a corrupt police department that sustains the turning of the cycle, destroys the lives of many innocent people.
After watching, it felt as though one cannot help but feel their helplessness. And as for the frequent and disturbing acts of violence perpetuated by male dominance in this film, they are perhaps too much to watch more than once. In terms of the film's perspective lens its structure of an interconnected narrative shared between many different characters really allows the viewer to see all the differing aspects of the burden that poverty & crime inflicts on people. They all experience it in some way or another, and it positions us to confront the ugly side of human nature by forcing us to empathize with loss in profoundly penetrating ways. Overall, this film is incredibly compelling and could be described as achieving a great deal of realism especially in terms of its ending. I recommend watching this film.