City of God is based on a true story in the 60s in one of Rio’s favelas, or slums. The film revolves around two main characters, Lil Ze, a notorious drug dealer,  and Rocket, an aspiring photographer whose lives intersect all too often, despite Rocket’s attempt to stay out of trouble. The film is separated into chapters which depict the different stages of the boys’ lives in a crime-driven neighborhood.

To my surprise, most of the actors featured in this film have no prior acting experience which made the film feel all the more authentic and showing of the violence that occurs within the slums of Brazil, and other parts of the world. One of the scenes that resonated the most with me was when one of the ‘runts’, a group of children involved with crime, was caught by Lil Ze. Prior to this scene we see the same child stealing from a local store with other runts, enjoying his spree. The runts seem to see themselves as as adults and arguably act as such throughout the movie, however, in this moment the boy is depicted as what he truly is: a boy. When he is threatened and eventually shot, we see him cry and let out a high pitched squeal, bluntly reminding us that he is only a child. This scene, along with the first chapter of the movie, show us how inescapable crime is for these children. There is no other option. And for those who do seek to escape, it could just as easily cost them their lives. For example, Knockout Ned, a handsome young man who has gone to school, served in the military, and works modestly as a bus fair collector, is suddenly drawn into a viscous brawl with Lil Ze, by chance. After Lil Ze rapes his girlfriend and kills his brother, Knockout Ned is out for revenge which consumes the rest of his days until he is killed by one of his ‘soldiers’.

Crime and violence within these slums seems almost inevitable, especially since the law enforcement can be just as corrupt as the criminals themselves.

This movie has led me to do more research on the current situation of favelas in Brazil and what has been done since then. Although it can get a bit bloody, I highly recommend it. I’m sure it will also spark an interest for you.

City of God was probably the best movie I’ve watched in the past year. It was an action-packed thriller, but it also got me thinking a lot about how it’s so difficult to break out of life in the favelas.

In the movie, a gang leader named Li’l Zé built up an enormous amount of power, coming close to controlling the entire “City of God,” a favela in Rio de Janeiro. For young kids, joining the gang was a way to not only be cool but also to make money. There were various different tiers of gang members, from sentries to soldiers to drug salesmen. However, it takes a lot of time for young kids to make their way up the totem pole, and as one of the “Runts,” a group of young wannabe gang leaders remarked, it wasn’t worth it. However, leaving the gang life was also difficult. One of the main motifs of the film was “a hood never stops, he just takes a break.” Once a boy gets involved with the gang lifestyle, it’s often too late. Maybe he gets hooked on drugs, and wastes his money away. Or maybe he’s unable to continue his education, and doesn’t have the skills to find a job in order to make an honest living. It seems that the movie’s message is that the situation never improves in the favela, for it’s clear when the Runts kill Li’l Zé that the cycle will just start all over again.

Last Friday, I watch the film City of God. The film depicted the lives of two individuals- Lil Ze and Rocket who grew up in Brazil-and more specifically examined how the choices made throughout their lives, and how different role models, can shape an individual’s future and influence their choices. The first individual, Rocket, grew up to be a photographer that had a long, more-so peaceful life, than Lil Ze. Lil Ze never had a role model, like Rocket had, in his life and as a result, lead a brutal, short-lived life. He sought to prove himself through violence and, as a result, became a feared drug lord. The City of God painted a violent picture of how life worked in the Favelas (slums) in Rio de Janerio during the mid to late 1900s. I feel like this film accurately shows the violence and the quality of life that occurs in Favelas during this time period. The directors of this film, Katia Lund and Fernando Meirelles, used individuals that lived in Rio de Janerio, Brazil as extras in the film. This film showed how drug lords and gang leaders used fear and manipulation to control their favelas, leading to death, rapes, and trafficking. When the police attempted to intervene, this led to shoot outs in the streets between the police force and these gangs. Essentially, police did not have the ability to intervene in these favelas or stop gang wars from occurring. Personally, I thought this movie accurately depicted life during the 70s and 80s in Brazil.

Last week, GRF Tyler hosted the movie City of God, which depicted the life of two individuals in the same poor neighborhood. One of them became a photographer, while the other became the drug lord. I was pleasantly surprised with how the directors played with the power dynamics involved with drugs. For instance, at one point the main antagonist, Lil’Z, ensured the safety of the local residents by keeping raiders off the streets with his display of violence and cruelness. More interestingly, he achieved this kind of fame through drugs and by doing something “good” for his neighborhood, something that I certainly wouldn’t associate with a drug dealer.

But at the same time, I think the movie reveals a lot of the darker themes in life, especially in poor countries. From the beginning, the police force in their neighborhood didn’t prove to be of much help and many people would often be intimidated into helping the people who have committed crimes. In addition, there was lots of thefts, innocent deaths, and rape, things that plague poorer countries without proper law enforcement. One thing I found surprising was the scene when Lil’Z forced a child to kill another child in order for the latter to prove his commitment and bravery into joining the gang. His psychotic behavior certainly fit his role as the gang leader.

Overall, this movie was a bit too bloody for me, I didn’t really expect to see children killing other children, or children wielding guns for that matter. However, I feel that it depicts a lot of the structure that goes on in these areas run by drug dealers. While the drugs are bad, it seems that during times where there is a prominent leader, people benefitted from the “crime” control as opposed to what local law enforcement could do.

I don’t think I’ve ever watched violent movies on my own but, this was definitely one of the better films that I have seen. The idea of crime retaining a type of order in an area that has the full potential to be completely lawless. City of God depicts how, when in need of resources, people can start equating actions with survival, regardless of any moral restrictions that others have the time to worry about. I liked the idea that what can be perceived as morally wrong for some can provide life and order for others. The movie followed the idea that you cannot just read a label and determine whether it is evil. For example, most people think of drug cartels as evil and they are…to an extent. In the context of this movie, Li’l Ze was this horrible character but as long as he was in absolute power, there was peace.

Another aspect of this movie that I liked was that wrongdoings will always breed more wrong to come. Li’l Ze was an awful character from the introduction of his character and he does nothing to redeem himself. Thus, it was not a huge shock in how he died by the hands of his enemies/child soldiers. However, the transformation and fate of Knockout Ned was interesting. Knockout Ned was humiliated by Li’l Ze, his girlfriend was raped in front of him, and his family was killed. Regardless of his initial intentions of being a righteous character, Knockout Ned was also contaminated by the business he was involved in. Although he never became the merciless character that Li’l Ze was, Knockout Ned lost his path on the way of getting his revenge. The wrong done to him was continued by him to inflict another and that led to both his and his victims’ downfall.

Before the movie began, I had wondered if it was based on true events. At the end (or was it the beginning?) there was that familiar line of text, “Based on a true story” or some variant of that. Doing a quick Wikipedia search right now reveals that the film is loosely based on true events. However, if the depiction of the level of violence is accurate, I’d be unpleasantly surprised. As the violence began ramping up in the film, I was reminded of reading online about the violence in Brazil (I’ve read grisly mentions of LiveLeak videos from Brazil, I’d recommend not Googling them). I couldn’t imagine living happily in a place like the film depicts.

One thing I found very interesting is how the most powerful gang leader in the city (Little Z) was depicted as being respected and even liked by the locals. Even though him and his gang peddled drugs and murdered, it seemed the people in the city gave more weight to the fact that he seemingly beneficently established rules that rape and robbery would not be tolerated in his “territory”. Perhaps because this kind of semi-organized crime is so normalized at this point in places like the city depicted in the film, people in these places just accept these crime lords and learn to look at them somewhat favorably.

This may seem an odd thing to focus on, but it stuck out to me because of a memory I have from Spanish class in high school. I lived in the southern tip of Texas in a city that shares a border with Mexico, where the majority of the population is Hispanic. Nearly everyone spoke Spanish, so the Spanish classes were not taken seriously at all, by neither the students nor the teachers. I ended up with an A in Spanish 1, 2, and 3, and I somehow don’t know how to speak Spanish. One distinct memory I have from Spanish class is when one day our teacher was talking about some iconic drug lord who was still at large in Mexico at the time. She related stories she’d heard of how he would appear unannounced in restaurants to have a meal. His goons would go around and collect everyone’s phones so that no one could call the police, and no one could leave while he was eating. After he was finished, people’s phones were returned and he would reportedly pay for the meals of everyone in the restaurant before leaving. The way she spoke of him stuck in my head, and I think of it every now and then. To me it seemed that she was actually praising him, and it seemed that other students shared her sentiment as they chimed in with their own stories of how magnanimous this guy was. I was appalled, and I was reminded of this as I was watching the film. GRF Tyler shared a Facebook post of a quote from a Brazilian man who grew up in a city like the one in the film, and even that gave off the vibe that the people in his city actually seemed to respect their crime lord for the little good that he did.

This was my third time watching the City of God, and with each viewing, I find that the film reveals a little more about itself; the dense, active, and chaotic space is somehow always punctuated with moments of clarity that interweave themselves in the urban fabric. De-centralized and continuously expanding, favelas are somewhat of an urban phenomenon. There is a self-organized spontaneity to them that inherently includes a logic of diversity. I was especially interested this time in following how the camera works with and/or against this urban fabric.

Within the film, architecture serves the purpose of facilitating fluid camera movement from one space into another, from one doorway through another, acting as stand-in facades that function not so much as set design as they do as tools to frame characters, as vignettes that introduce individual portraits of people in constant states of dislocation and relocation. The running camera immerses us into the layered dynamics of the neighborhood—the density as well as expanse of it. It follows one character and lands on another as the voiceover helps us transition between characters. We move quickly in and out of a lot of places, we witness many events, and as we remain confined on the microcosmic level of activity, we become even more aware of the macro systematic problems of gang violence and power vacuums.