In  which Stephanie Reviews a Film from Notmerica

Brazil’s

City of God

or

“It’s a hard knock life for child murders”

When I started this article, my hope was that it would inspire people to go out and experience movies that dealt with things outside of their cultural bubble. I then had to make a decision about what direction to go in: should I find rare indie films that no one has ever heard of, as my editor suggested? Or should I review films that were more well known and recognized around the world for their achievements? I realized that I wanted to share movies that transcend geographical separation and to go beyond what people accept as possible for a film to accomplish. Besides, if after my last article a popfliterino decided to watch My Neighbor Totoro and fell in love with Miyazaki, became motivated to watch his other films and from there went on to develop a love of anime? Well that’s the kind of contribution I’d like to make in the world, because pop culture rules. This week, the film I want to share is City of God,  directed by Fernando Meirelles and released in 2002.

City of God tells the story of the real life drug war between rival gangs in the Rio De Janeiro ghetto know as The City of God in the 1970s. The movie draws in the audience in its world through engrossing cinematography through a surprisingly neutral narrator named Rocket.

Rocket gives the film its raw storytelling power; he lives the the City of God and is affected by the violence and crime but is removed enough from it to give his story a valid perspective. An aspiring photographer, he stands close enough to what’s going on to hold a lens up for the audience to peer through but refrains from becoming directly involved in what’s going on–yet- adds context and meaning to the action. Rocket builds the framework  that starts in the 1960s, detailing the events that lead up to this conflict that started over rival drug territories and turned into a full blown war, obliterating the peace of this Rio neighborhood.Alexandre Rodrigues plays Rocket with a gentle grace and subtle but constant energy.

There is so much to unpack in this movie. One important thing I want to note is the way it handles the genesis of the child soldier. Meirelles pays careful attention to the scenes dealing with children which results in a gangland style execution of innocence. Every time a character attempts to leave this world, he is shot and killed. The tagline of the film is, “If you run, the buck catches; if you stay, the buck eats.” There is an intractable reality in the world these children grow up. A gun is placed in a child’s hand and he is told to go kill and should that child survive to adulthood, he then puts a gun in another child’s hand and tells him to go kill. There is no escape, no salvation, no way out.

City of God is a remarkable achievement in film; it deserves more than to be condescended to as, “one of the greatest foreign movies of all time.” Rather, I will simply say that this is one of the greatest movies of all time.

-Stephanie Rose