Fall 2014 #2: City of God (2002) - Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund

This film is the kind of film that you start with an “eh” attitude and by the time you finish you’re clutching your seat and your mouth is dropped as the credits roll. It’s an intense Brazilian crime drama about poverty, oppression, gang violence, and class warfare. And the plot gets started by this chicken.

In the poor suburb of Rio de Janeiro, the Cidade de Deus (City of God) is a favela, a heavily impoverished neighborhood filled with violence and drugs. Our main character, Rocket, grew up here, and from a young age he remembered teenagers that wanted more out of life turning to gang crime, like robbing fuel trucks or general stores.

The suffocating violence and poverty made it impossible to get out alive, especially with well-intentioned aspirations. Rocket dreams of becoming a photographer, and as he grows up, we see him avoiding the crime life that his brother was a huge part of. But crime has a way of finding Rocket.

The cyclical nature of the narrative is incredibly impressive, with the story jumping from when Rocket experiences a defining moment in his life, and then tracing his childhood and adolescence until we understand why he is where he is. It makes everything all the more moving to know where most of the characters come from and how they ended up choosing to either stay out of the crime and die innocently or join the crime and die a gangster.

Each character is well-mapped by the narrator, Rocket, and understanding all of the pieces of his story is the most exhilarating part of watching this harrowing film about a world so outside of my understanding. In one subplot, Rocket pines after a girl, but soon that story leads us into how a kid Rocket knew growing up became the biggest drug lord in the City of God by the age of 18.

Overall, I loved the film, so I’m not surprised that it’s #21 on the IMDb Top 250. I couldn’t believe that it hadn’t won any Oscars, since it relies so carefully on a meticulously developed narrative structure while also showcasing a real moral dilemma in great cities of the world today. It asks us to wonder if the slums are better off being run by police who couldn’t care less or by those who take the rules into their own hands for financial gain. Because there’s corruption everywhere when someone’s morals can be bought for a few bucks or a sack of cocaine.