MTV Neo-realism

Rating: 9/10 (15 November 2002)

"Cidade de Deus"is without a shadow of a doubt a worthy film. Judging by today's cinema standards it is rather unusual. Life in the Rio favelas and the struggle for survival of its inhabitants don't come first to mind as the ideal formula pitch for the latest Hollywood blockbuster. A quote of reality is these days extremely shocking and, funnily enough, a welcomed relief from our culture general lack of content and genuine disinterest in reflecting anything too uncomfortable to watch with the exception of cheap and easy-to-digest thrills.
The film left me disturbed but also with this very feeling of discomfort.
Are our thresholds for levels of excitement and sensation growing to a point that require more and more images of stylised extreme brutality and editing at supersonic speed in order to get in contact with the reality of today's world? Is this the only vocabulary in which the message can reach home?
Is this generation of new creative filmmakers only going to take Scorsese as their prime inspiration, their mentor and their aesthetic leader?
When with Scorsese the style rings true, his followers sound hollow at the core. They are full of beans and energetic pathos but empty of cinematic ideas, of innovation in their vocabulary and ultimately of real feeling to convey the humanity and real dramatic intensity of the characters of films such as Mean Streets or Goodfellas.
The fast cutting MTV editing style, the "de rigour" voice over narrative, the multiple stories, the continuous bombardment of sound, the split screen easy device are all the signs of an advertising breeding and of a method of telling a story as subtle as a pop video. "Cidade de Deus" pretends to be a docu-drama faithful to the facts and the lives of the characters it portrays. Far from this intention we learn very little through the film neither of the socio-political context in which these events take place or, unlike its predecesor Amores Perros, the intensity of feelings of the characters surrounded by so much misery and death.
There is a touch of intending to emulate the neorealism of say a Bicycle Thieves or La terra Trema in the use of non-professional actors playing their own lives. The ambiguity created by the use of real inhabitants recruited from the favelas itself add to the sense of reality but also a voyeuristic touch that left me with a bitter taste and a sense of exploitation of the real place and people.
It reminds me of that Vogue magazine photo shoot in the 70's were incredibly sophisticated models in their latest Cardin or Pucci outfits were being photographed,Avedon style, with the Brazilian slums for background.