A vivid movie about hope and despair in Brazil's slums

Rating: 8/10 (20 June 2004)

Brazil's National Office of Tourism must have been non too pleased about this film. As a Northern suburbanite, to me Brazil has always meant soccer, samba and bossa nova. If I were to pick three destinations for a trip, Brazil would be right up there. Before seeing this movie, that is.
I remember reading a review of City of God last year. I remembered two things about the review: it was positive, and the image that accompanied it was the one that appears at the top of the DVD cover. I expected a story to match that picture: hot and sensual. Boy was I in for a surprise.
City of God follows the life of Rocket, a young boy trapped in the misery of Rio's slums. He wants to escape this so-called "City of God" and become a photographer.
The City of God is a favela, a slum, where Rio de Janeiro's poor are unceremoniously dumped, to "clean the streets". It's a tough place to live when times are good. It is pure hell when times are bad.
Rocket, Li'l Z and Bene were three childhood friends. They grew up but took different paths: Li'l Ze and Bene chose the path of crime. They become partners in the most powerful gang of the favela. Li'l Ze is the ruthless head of the gang, while Bene is the more level-headed right arm.
Rocket decides that a life of crime is not for him and that he would rather pursue his lifelong passion, photography. But in the slums, it's hard not to contribute to the violence. It's even harder to escape it.
The characters are entirely believable, they are well fleshed out and played marvelously by the actors, most of whom were acting for the first time.
The camera work in this movie is somewhat disconcerting. At certain times, it looks like a big budget movie. At other times, the jittery camera and ever-changing shot angles make it feel more like a documentary. The camera play adds a lot to the movie's intensity.
Another interesting trick is the way the director makes use of flashbacks. The movie is one big recounting of events, accompanied by flashbacks within The Flashback. Flashbacks are nothing new, of course, but the way it was used in City Of God was refreshing. I believe the reason for that is explained in the credits. I think saying what happens in the credits would be considered a spoiler, so I won't say anything about it. But if you're one of those people who turn off the DVD as soon as the credits start rolling, you would be wise to make an exception in this case.
This is an excellent but disturbing movie. The director did not try to sugarcoat the gang problem in Rio's favelas. As most people know, one of those problems is the prevalence of gangs of children committing violent crime in the city. They have a name, but I forget what it is. Well, the director does not shy away from using child actors in violent and crude scenes.
As a Northerner, seeing children being shot at point blank, screaming in pain and fear is unnerving. I'm sure if the movie had been made in America, there is no way such a scene would have been allowed. It would have changed the movie's rating to NC-17. That is, if they had allowed it to be released at all.
I'm not sure what issues Brazilian movies usually tackle, but I found this one to be particularly well made. I especially enjoyed the fact that it was distributed in original Brazilian Portuguese with subtitles, instead of being dubbed.
Even though I don't speak or understand Portuguese, I've never been big on dubbing. No matter how well they are made, I've never seen a dubbed translation that allowed all the subtleties of the original to transpire. Of course, subtitles are even worse with regards to content. There's no way to make the subtitles keep up with with the spoken text. But what you lose in content, you retain in atmosphere and feeling. To me, that is more important.
This is a movie about hopes and dreams, pain and despair. We've seen it a lot in ghetto movies from the '90s and the beginning of the '00s; think Boyz n The Hood and the like. But it has rarely been told so vividly.