(CIDADE DE DEUS)
***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino, Phellipe Haagensen, Douglas Silva, Jonathan Haagensen, and Alice Braga
Directed by Fernando Meirelles with Katia Lund & written for the screen by Braulio Mantovani, from the novel by Paulo Lins
2002 (2003 wide-release)
130 min R
Dozen-or-So Best Films of 2003
“City of God” is a ferocious piece of filmmaking. It uses every trick and contrivance in the moviemaking arsenal—jump cuts, time lapse photography, freeze frames, title cards, frantic editing, whirling camera motions—to tell a story that includes literally dozens of characters over about 25 years, including tangents, flashbacks, and back stories. There are times when it seems the technique of director Fernando Meirelles threatens to overwhelm the movie's message. But pumping through the veins of every frame is a sense of indignation and frustration over the seemingly insoluble crisis of crime in a Brazilian ghetto.
At only a little over two hours, "City of God's" pace is absolutely breakneck; there’s no possible way, within a single viewing, that we can keep up with all the people, places, events, and dates. But the film’s intent is not so much to have us literally grasp everything washing over us as to revel in the its ability to create its own universe. More than keeping up with everything on the screen, we feel in the presence of someone who understands it all, and who has lived a life so deadly and dangerous that the best he can do is blurt out as much as he can before having to run for cover again. And by making “City of God’s” criminal network as sprawling and convoluted as possible—the underworld seems to reach limitlessly in all directions and in all times—the movie defies an easy solution. There is no “quick fix” for the souls unlucky enough to be born in the City of God.
As such, “City of God” is more a montage of sounds and images about Brazil and crime than it is a straight narrative. The movie begins in the 1960s, in a desperately poor Rio de Janerio housing development known as the City of God, and it moves up until the early 1980s. In that time we see gang warfare, vengeance, kids with guns, everyone smoking pot or snorting coke, and an assembly line of drugs in bags. Tough young men walk shirtless with guns in their wastebands, a drug dealer sells his soul to the devil, an informant beats his wife with a shovel after catching her with another man, police gun down unarmed teenagers.
From this emerges the familiar story of two boys, one good and one bad, who grow (at least physically) into young men. One is Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues) and the other is Li’l Dice (Leandro Firmino). Rocket is our all-seeing, all-knowing narrator, who survives by making friends out of the crooks but never becoming one himself. He smiles, says nothing, holds no grudges, displays no pride. He stays alive by going with the flow and remaining, if not quite moral, then at least neutral. Rocket saves his energy for a career as a photographer and that he succeeds is a miracle. Contrasting him is Li’l Dice, a brutal scumbag who works his way up through the drug trade through violence, cunning, and a complete absence of humanity. Well, not quite complete: we are allowed to peek through his mask at the frightened boy behind all the violence, who can't get any girls to dance with him, and who can’t stand the thought of his best friend and right-hand man leaving the underworld.
In a movie of almost nonstop disturbing images, perhaps nothing is more shocking than the youth of “City of God’s” hoodlums. The subsequent generation that is biting at Li’l Dice's heels is even younger and portrayed as a mangy pack of young, illiterate toddlers. They have no respect for the rules of their elders, who, of course, had no respect for the rules of their elders. A childishness permeates the crooks as they race on bicycles, wave their guns like toy six-shooters, and assume lame tough guy poses when getting their pictures taken. When Li’l Dice's right-hand takes steps to put crime behind him, it is not so much as a step for morality or self-preservation as it is maturation, like an older kid who has grown out of the world of make-believe.
Other threads and characters to emerge from “City of God” include a trio of hooligans from Rocket’s boyhood, an apartment that changes hands among rival drug dealers, a good man turned on an evil warpath after Li’l Dice wrongs him, and so many conflicting and overlapping footnotes and tidbits of revenge and betrayal. The characters are all known by their nicknames: Goose, Clipper, Carrot, Benny, and Knockaround Ned. Most of the film is realistic in its grimy, atmospheric way, but there are incidents that border on the supernatural, including Li’l Dice's satanic bargain and the boy who has left crime for the Church and is rendered briefly impervious to bullets.
In addition to Meirelles wildly aggressive direction, cinematographer Cesar Charlone is the movie’s other hero. Day in Rio is tinted the washed-out orange of old home movies and night is the foggy blue of dim memories. Bare chests and backs are perpetually bright with perspiration. “City of God” will make you sweat as much as “Girl with a Pearl Earring” made you shiver. Through the veil of Meirelles’ cinematic trickery and Charlone’s visual style, it’s hard to imagine that the cast can succeed, but it does. The story of Knockaround Ned is perhaps the most tragic, as he turns from a genuinely good man into an empty shell of revenge.
With its insider’s look at multi-generational organized crime, Meirelles’ film begs comparison to “Goodfellas.” Like Scorsese’s masterpiece, “City of God” is a powerful film but also an entertaining one (you just can’t use “Everybody was Kung-Fu Fighting” in a movie without getting laughs), albeit in a way that kind of makes you want to take a shower when you’re done. The full barrage of the big budget movie is regularly rolled out for vacuous entertainment, usually four or five times a summer. It’s refreshing to see these resources at the disposal of a meaningful story like this or “Gangs of New York.” But it might be nice to see a multi-generational, tangent-laden story told as ferociously as “City of God,” but not about the world of crime. Or the Civil War.
Finished February 19, 2004
Copyright © 2004 Friday & Saturday Night
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