Directed by Fernando Meirelles. 140 minutes.
Starring Matheus Nachtergaele, Seu Jorge, Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino da Hora. Released by Miramax Films.
Every so often, I see a film that reminds me why I love going to the movies so much. Occasionally, I see one that completely blows my mind and leaves me talking about it for days. City of God, the feature directorial debut of Fernando Meirelles, is such a movie. Stylistically adopting elements from such films as Goodfellas, Pixote, Pulp Fiction, and occasionally The Battle of Algiers, Meirelles’ film style has an authenticity all its own. Recently entered as Brazil’s entry for the upcoming Academy Awards, City of God is in fact a 2003 release, having been released for the first time in the States this weekend in New York and Los Angeles and, in my opinion, making it the first great film of the year.
The film opens with a wonderful shot. Several children, all armed, chase a chicken down a street in the slums of Brazil, nicknamed the “City of God,” firing at it. The bird ducks and dodges its pursuers, running in and out of traffic. The scene, seeming, in many ways, quite similar to the opening scene of Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, in which a mob of children attack some scorpions, is cut short as a boy bends over to pick the chicken up. As he looks around, he notices a large gang of Brazilian drug dealers aiming a massive artillery at him. When he looks the other way, he spots policeman, aiming guns right back. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place. It is here that we meet Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), our narrator, his voice-over bringing to mind the narration in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas.
Rocket is the brother of one of the slums’ most notorious hoods, but does not seem interested in his brother’s lifestyle, though one hilarious sequence has him testing the waters. Instead, Rocket is interested in photography. He narrates the film’s story, which, much like Pulp Fiction, as well as various other copycat films, jumps from character to character, smoothly I might add, as he relays how he arrived in the current predicament in which we find him at the film’s beginning. An array of characters make their way into the story, including Benny, the nicest hood in the City of God, or Angelica, the first girl that Rocket falls in love with, or Carrot, a white drug dealer living in the slums who remains alive through pure dumb luck, and Knockaround Ned, a good looking bus attendant who becomes a gangster when his family is gunned down. After Rocket, however, Lil Ze is the character that we cannot take our eyes off of. As a matter of fact, none of the characters in the story can take their eyes off of him either for fear of being killed. Ze is a ruthless killer, who, upon return to the slums after fleeing years before, he kills all of the area’s drug dealers and takes over their business. Ze is pure menace, brilliantly played by Leandro Firmino da Hora, an unknown actor. With Bill the Butcher and Lil Ze, I think the market for frightening villains is officially cornered.
Visually, the film is a feat of cinematic brilliance. The director uses a variety of techniques, many of which first used by American directors, and makes them his own. The camera follows characters from a first point of view, often not letting the audience know whose point of view is being presented. Meirelles’ use of fast motion, most often in scenes of brutal violence, are phenomenal, nearly knocking the wind out of you every time he decides to use the technique. The film’s violence is ever present, incredibly brutal, but never exploitative. These are not grown men firing point blank range at one another, but children, sometimes as young as ten or eleven. One scene in which Ze orders a young boy to decide which of his friends, who look between the ages of eight and ten, will live and die and then forces him to shoot one of them is almost unbearable. Many directors have adopted flashy visual styles, but fall short in the content department. Meirelles falls into no such trap. You either love or hate his characters, sometimes both equally. There is never one moment when Rocket’s story lacks punch and not one scene that anything less than electrifying.
Much like Pixote, another amazing film concerning young children brought up in a violent society on the streets of Brazil, the film feels honest and real. Apparently based on a true story, City of God tells a story that transcends cultures. Though its story begins in the 1960s and ends somewhere in the early 1980s, the film is nonetheless timely. With last year’s Bowling for Columbine criticizing America’s culture of violence, Meirelles’ film is one, much like Kids and Columbine, that should be viewed by today’s youth, despite the film’s intense violence. As Requiem for a Dream could do for drugs and Kids could do for unprotected sex, City of God, if nothing else, is a film that could serve as a sufficient warning to those considering gang activity and those feeling the need to carry weapons. In many ways, this is one of the most frightening films I have seen in quite some time. But fear is only one of the many intense emotions that Meirelles pulls from his audience. Even if the film is only seen by a select few in America, which it may well be for foreign films often unfortunately have only a limited audience in our culture, this is a movie that will very likely long be remembered. City of God is a classic.