City of God

Rating: 10/10 (15 October 2016)

City of God is, in my opinion, a complete masterpiece. Director Fernando Meirelles' use of a predominantly amateur cast (with some actors, including Leandro Firmino, the actor who played the role of adult Lil Ze, formerly living in the real-life City of God) allows the film to have a very real, candid showing of life within a dangerous slum. In a world where the most promising way of life is to rob, steal, and deal drugs, our main character Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues) must try to remain honest and steer clear of the life of crime ahead of him. The film is a fast-paced brutal thriller that unapologetically depicts the real struggles of a life of poverty in one of Rio de Jainero's most dangerous slums. One of the film's greatest achievements is the complete submersion of the audience in the unforgiving world of the City of God, in order to establish a feeling of isolation and desperation, where danger lurks around every corner only to be completely contrasted with shots depicting the more stable metropolitan areas of Rio. This submersion is accomplished using many techniques. First, depicting the origin of the slum in the 1960's as more bright and containing only few criminals only to slowly descend into more violence and criminals, and more killing for the sake of killing in the 1980's. The intensity of the slum is shown with darker lighting, a funky soundtrack, faster cuts, and more firefights. For me, the reason this film succeeds so well is due to the fact that instead of the audience viewing the favela from a safe distance and experiencing feelings of horror because of how different it is from our comfortable lives, we are forced to live it as the real inhabitants do, to be completely submerged in the city with seemingly no way out, and that is terrifying in a completely different way.