| Overall Grade: |
A+ |
|
| Story: |
A |
|
|
| Acting: |
A+ |
|
|
| Direction: |
A+ |
|
|
| Visuals: |
A+ |
|
|
Splashy, violent, sublime
by CarlosC (movies profile)
Oct 17, 2006
23
of
29 people found this review helpful
Adolescent hooligans populate Brazil's masterpiece Cannes offering, CIDADE DE DEUS (CITY OF GOD, 2003), a coming-of-age story set in the mean streets of the Rio de Janeiro slums. Postcard Rio is relegated to a corner of the distant horizon in this pic, which follows a kid named Rocket (played by Luis Otávio in early scenes and by Alexandre Rodrigues in the rest of the movie) as he navigates a web of intrigue and violence to escape desperate poverty and crime to pursue his photographer's dream. The sexual exploits of youth in a sultry and crowded Third World slum, in the context of the groovy Seventies, fill out the rest of the plot.
CITY OF GOD recaptures the panache and daring with which Martin Scorcese captured the grittiness of urban life in such films as MEAN STREETS (1973) and TAXI DRIVER (1976). All the while, it has the story arch of a Quentin Tarantino film, and the slick editing of MTV. It is a visually staggering movie, deploying a battery of story telling techniques to hop across two decades and unfurl the ongoing saga of scores of characters, which can be distilled to a small group of friends who grow up and become enemies in drug traffickers' turf wars. Leandro Firmino is Little Zee, the big bad ruthless gangster, and Phellipe Haagensen is his sidekick Benny, the hippest, coolest gangster in Rio. The two are childhood friends and partners in crime of Rocket's dead brother, and the would-be photojournalist must dodge them to get through his own life.
There is something intoxicating about CITY OF GOD's setting. Perhaps because Brazil is such an emblem of raw humanity. Where else do we find so great an assemblage of mankind. They have all the racial diversity of the U.S., but to the uninformed outsider, without the hang-ups and fixations surrounding race. Among the protagonists, we find the chocolate hued Rocket; the mocha skinned, mixed beauty played by Alice Braga; and a carrot-top kid with freckles played by Matheus Nachtergaele. And, they are all in the same boat -- in terms of social class and economic stratum. Brazil has the most exotic music in the world, and the characters all samba their way down to the ocean, throbbing and sweaty muscles glittering under a glaring sun. There is a pulsing, exhilarating vitality that drives this film, and it is well beyond the sex and violence that provide palpable suspense and chills onscreen. It has to do with that place, and somehow the film's cinematography and soundtrack encapsulates the excitement of being there.
CITY OF GOD is sensationally violent, but it has to be that way to be true to its subject matter. Some of the violence would be obscene without a pressing justification. In one scene, for example, very young children, aged 8 to 12 we must assume, have to shoot each other. It is heart rendering, because they act as little big men, but they react as little kids: they cry. But, this is one case where the violence was necessary: it makes CITY OF GOD a better film. It would have been dishonest without it. And, this is a very, very honest film.
(Carlos Colorado) |
My Public Profile 
