Flick of The Day: City of God / Cidade de Deus

It's hard to believe but it is ten years since Fernando Meirelles tale of the effects of crime on the inner city slums of Rio de Janeiro burst onto our cinema screens. Epic in structure, it is a landmark film of modern Brazilian cinema and was a big hit in its day, leading many cinema critics Top 10 lists for the year and garnering 4 Oscar nominations.

City of God

Narrated by Rocket played by Alexandre Rodrigues among a cast of relatively unknown Brazilian players, the film opens with Rocket as a gifted amateur photographer caught literally in the middle of the war zone between the gang led by local drug lord Lil Ze and the corrupt police who watch over the slums. As this showdown takes place, Rocket thinks back to how the current gang war started and how the slums were initially built way back in the 1960's. In a narrative which jumps back and forth across two decades of Rio street history, Rocket tells the various stories of his home town from the original gangsters called the Tender Trio on account of their wish to avoid conflict to the rise of Lil Ze and his partner Bene while completing an overarching narrative of Rocket's own attempts to survive and escape the slums in pursuit of his dreams of being a photographer.

While often bleak in its view of the violence and corruption which blights the lives of the citizens of the city of god, the film pulses with the vibrancy of the city. It jumps out at you from the beginning and never lets up displaying all of the hyperactivity of early Tarantino with a soulfulness and sense of humour all of its own. It never seeks to glorify the actions of these hoods, seeing as they are based on actual events and is all the better for it. It gives the film an almost documentary feel despite the frenetic speed of things.

Utilising a cast of largely non-professional actors from the city of god slum adds even more to the sense of realism which pervades throughout. All of this realism could make for a depressing film without a moral core and this core is Rocket. He quickly realises that he is not cut out for life as a hoodlum and is the character which holds the centre ground when compared to the terrifying psychotic that is Lil Ze. Rocket documents the rise and fall of Lil Dice who grew up into Lil Ze and is the main focus of the narrative. Both the younger version played by Douglas Silva and the fully grown version played by Leandro Firmino da Hora are scary from the get go and dominate the screen.

All in all, this is a powerful film even today and if you haven't seen it you are missing out. A great cast of unknowns combined with an epic tale of the effects of crime on a neighbourhood and its denizens make for gripping viewing.