Brazilian Masterpiece About Poverty

Rating: 10/10 (17 January 2012)

Fernando Meirelles' City of God is a sweeping tale of how crime affects the poor population of Rio de Janeiro.City of God,also knows as Cidade de Deus,is a Brazilian crime drama film directed by Meirelles and co- directed by Kátia Lund.It was released in Brazil in 2002 and worldwide in 2003. The story was adapted by Bráulio Mantovani from the 1997 novel of the same name written by Paulo Lins, but the characters are not fictitious and the plot is based upon real events. It depicts the growth of organized crime in the Cidade de Deus suburb of Rio de Janeiro, between the end of the '60s and the beginning of the '80s, with the closure of the film depicting the war between the drug dealer Li'l Zé and criminal Knockout Ned.The cast includes Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino da Hora, Jonathan Haagensen, Douglas Silva, Alice Braga and Seu Jorge. Most of the actors were, in fact, residents of favelas such as Vidigal and the Cidade de Deus itself.
Though the narrative skips around in time, the main focus is on Cabeleira who formed a gang called the Tender Trio. He and his best friend, Bené, become crime lords over the course of a decade. When Bené is killed before he can retire, Lil' Zé attempts to take out his arch enemy, Sandro Cenoura. But Sandro and a young gangster named Mane form an alliance and begin a gang war with Lil' Zé. Amateur photographer Buscape takes pictures of the brutal crime war, making their story famous.
Meirelles' Brazilian slum epic is a profound, stylistically expansive depiction of three decades of child gang warfare on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro with non-actors playing their poverty-ridden lives for the camera.The living conditions it projects are as horrendous as I had feared, but the movie is surprisingly easy to take as a rollicking homicidal entertainment as Meirelles takes us to a real-life deathtrap and then proceeds to make us feel twice as alive for the time we spend there.Each chapter is endowed with powerful, uncompromising, beguiling and, sometimes, deceptive momentum which makes it great film.Added to that,the acting from the cast was brilliant.Overall,it is a shocking and disturbing film but it give the viewer compelling look at life in the slums particularly in Brazil.