Thursday, March 13, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Film: City of God doesn't flinch from violent streets of Rio

By Mike Prevatt

In City of God (Cidade de Deus), an amateur photographer named Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues) is asked to take pictures of a dominating gang from a shantytown outside Rio de Janeiro. Rocket captures the boys in all their premature machismo, but when he has the local newspaper's photography department--where he works part time--develop the pictures, his carelessness lands the pictures on the front page of the next morning's edition. This is not good, and he quickly fears for his life. What he doesn't know is the boys' delight upon seeing their mugs 'n' guns in the newspaper. Their authority is confirmed; they're not just street hoods anymore--they are, in their own way, celebrities.

There are other moments in City of God that are reminiscent of the stylistic depravity and black humor depicted by directors such as Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese, but the one film that comes to mind most frequently is the Hughes brothers' 1993 gang flick Menace II Society, which also tells a grim tale of ghetto escape and social ascent through crime. Both ultraviolent films tend to de-emphasize a moral lesson for the raw portrayal of urban power struggles and teenage misanthropy, and you wonder if perhaps the vague messages and quest to "keep it real" are giving the filmmakers free rein to be sensationalist. Does the need for starkness excuse the lack of remorse these pubescent thugs have as they celebrate their conquests--like the point-blank shooting by a kid forced to prove his manhood by choosing between two possible victims even younger than him?

Well, much to the chagrin of Joseph Lieberman and Bob Dole, film isn't usually held to principle in order to entertain or inform, and despite some unexplored accountability, directors Kátia Lund and Fernando Meirelles manage to pull off a compelling work in City of God anyway. It examines a world that might be new to Americans not up on their world news, as the reality of urban life in Brazil is rampant murder and drug use.

Thousands of boys die from gunfire every year in Rio de Janeiro, and it's not just the poor kids breaking the law. Police brutality and corruption give the hoodlums a sense of purpose and encourage vengeance. And, making matters worse, masculinity and maturity are defined not by one's inner security, personal development or familial role, but how hardcore one is when it comes to drug intake, gun possession and homicidal tendencies. These social breakdowns, as well as a crammed plot, threaten to bury the film, except that its narration, confidently handled by Rodrigues, is too strong--if accidental--a moral center to let everything go to pot.

We see the city and its history through Rocket's eyes, and it is mostly a nonjudging perspective. However, the uncensored delinquency speaks as strongly as any videotaped atrocity on the evening news, and we are left to choose him as the hero simply because he cannot be swayed by the dark side. Other community members unimpressed with authority-through-intimidation, such as the respected young hippie Bene (Philippe Haagensen), offer moments of hope for the youth of the city. But thwarting any rehabilitation is kingpin L'il Ze (played menacingly well by Leandro Firmino da Hora), whose rule is made more stable the more he instills fear among the slum kids.

Visually, City of God is a wonder. Odd camera angles, quick spin-around cinematography and rapid-fire editing (awarded by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts recently) give the film a guerrilla flare, even if it panders to short attention spans (its length, however, does not).

And as for its seemingly indulgent approach to impoverished carnage and underage ferocity, its shock value might be dismissed if its narrator or story didn't make us care. Somewhere in City of God, there is a conscience, and when it surfaces, we're finally left with a minor semblance of hope--as close to a happy ending as you could expect from such shock-prone cinema.