City Of God
“15 miles from paradise, one man will do anything to tell the world everything.” This tagline is one of first thing audience can see by just looking at poster of a movie that won countless awards and is 21st in the list of top rated movies. City of God, is an unforgettable movie about the survival of two boys who take different path in live while growing up in brutal favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The movie is based on a novel of same name by Paulo Lins, who grew up there, left it and spends eight years writing the book. Cidade de Deus translated as City of God is favela where poor people. A favela is defined from Portuguese as slum established on outskirts of Rio. Favelas in Brazil are crowded, and according to Ricardo Geromel's
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Forbes article,”Eduardo Paes, Rio de Janeiro's Mayor, and Reveals Where the Money Is Heading to in Brazil: Favelas." The interview revealed that there are now 11,400,000 millions of people living in favelas.
The mayor states, “If the favelas were a city,it would be the 9th most populated in the Brazil.” Ferdando Mairelles a film director does an excellent job at showing how people actually live. Therefore a great movie like City of God must be judged by criteria of content, technical excellence, and overall quality. Without content; plot and originality, City of God would not have become such success internationally. The film is following a narrator Rocket, a boy who aspires to be a photographer. He grew up in City of God never wanting to follow "The Tender Trio", one of which was his brother, Goose, they are Robin Hoods, giving part of the earnings to people of the city. He tells a story of another boy Lil’Dice later knows as Lil’Ze, a psychopath who becomes most famous drug lord with his best friend Benny, they are controlling the city during the 70’s and 80’s. Rocket begins his photography career by pictures of his friends, especially Angelica his love interest. There is peace upon City of God, which is kept by Benny, and the only thing that Lil’Ze wants to do is eliminate his last rival Carrot. As Rocket tells later that Angelica and Benny
become a couple, and she persuades him to leave criminal life, and live together on the farm. Lil’Ze humiliates Knockout Ned at Benny’s going away party. Unfortunately, Benny is killed by former drug dealer, Blackie whose priority was to kill Lil’Ze. Now that Benny is dead, Carrot is in danger as Benny was the only guy who kept peace between Lil’Ze and Carrot. Rocket is now helping out at newspaper. At the very end of the movie a “Vietnam War” breaks out between Lil’Ze and Knockout Ned who is sided with Carrot, stopped by police force. Ned is killed by little boy who avenges for the father death, who was a security guard and was killed by Ned in bank robbery. Carrot and Lil’Ze are arrested, police humiliate him and take all the money, realizing him while everything is being photographed by Rocket in secret. After cops leave, Runts (gang consisting of young children) murder Lil’Ze. Rocket takes picture of the dead body and goes to newspaper. He is afraid to put up pictures of cops because they will go after him. Then he decides to put up a picture of Lil’Ze as it will get him an internship at newspaper. The movie ends with runts walking around City of God asking who of them could write to create black list to kill drug lords to take over their business and rule. The movie is original as it creates something new. It breaks out from traditional fiction, creating Modernism. As Rocket tells the story in unbiased and gives particular view of the events. The movie does a great job at presenting a nonlinear narrative, which starts at end with “Rocket standing in the middle before Lil’Ze and Ned start the war. Next follows the beginning of 1960’s and Rocket’s narrative, the middle follows 1970’s and Rocket’s love for photography, a girl, ad smoking. The end follows with 1980’s, a war, Rocket’s success with newspaper, and revealing a new name. The achievements that the film received was due its technical excellence. Cesar Charlone a cinematographer of the film used different shots in three distinct eras. The first being when the favela was not yet fully developed, it had a lot of space, felt relaxed which made camera move freely. But, during the ‘70s, the changes in camera began to show. The camera was going much closer to characters which created claustrophobic feeling in enclosed space of favela. It looks like during that era, Lil’Ze was shot in low angle showing that he was more powerful. In addition, cameras show how the life in favelas is chaotic and unauthorized. Furthermore, lighting and color was used brilliantly during two much different eras. Audience can see how the 60’s era overused gold and yellow light, giving it a disturbing feel. Those colors have a lot of negativity, representing impatience of Lil’Dice (Lil’Ze) It also represents his lack of emotions when he killed Rocket’s brother Goose. Portraying that lack of compassion with make him a psychopath in future. Whereas, the 70’s and 80’s change bright colors to gloomy grey and dark lighting, which represents pessimism of families and little kids who realize that they will never get out of favelas, they are now slaves to their creation of own oblivion
Forbes article,”Eduardo Paes, Rio de Janeiro's Mayor, and Reveals Where the Money Is Heading to in Brazil: Favelas." The interview revealed that there are now 11,400,000 millions of people living in favelas.
The mayor states, “If the favelas were a city,it would be the 9th most populated in the Brazil.” Ferdando Mairelles a film director does an excellent job at showing how people actually live. Therefore a great movie like City of God must be judged by criteria of content, technical excellence, and overall quality. Without content; plot and originality, City of God would not have become such success internationally. The film is following a narrator Rocket, a boy who aspires to be a photographer. He grew up in City of God never wanting to follow "The Tender Trio", one of which was his brother, Goose, they are Robin Hoods, giving part of the earnings to people of the city. He tells a story of another boy Lil’Dice later knows as Lil’Ze, a psychopath who becomes most famous drug lord with his best friend Benny, they are controlling the city during the 70’s and 80’s. Rocket begins his photography career by pictures of his friends, especially Angelica his love interest. There is peace upon City of God, which is kept by Benny, and the only thing that Lil’Ze wants to do is eliminate his last rival Carrot. As Rocket tells later that Angelica and Benny
become a couple, and she persuades him to leave criminal life, and live together on the farm. Lil’Ze humiliates Knockout Ned at Benny’s going away party. Unfortunately, Benny is killed by former drug dealer, Blackie whose priority was to kill Lil’Ze. Now that Benny is dead, Carrot is in danger as Benny was the only guy who kept peace between Lil’Ze and Carrot. Rocket is now helping out at newspaper. At the very end of the movie a “Vietnam War” breaks out between Lil’Ze and Knockout Ned who is sided with Carrot, stopped by police force. Ned is killed by little boy who avenges for the father death, who was a security guard and was killed by Ned in bank robbery. Carrot and Lil’Ze are arrested, police humiliate him and take all the money, realizing him while everything is being photographed by Rocket in secret. After cops leave, Runts (gang consisting of young children) murder Lil’Ze. Rocket takes picture of the dead body and goes to newspaper. He is afraid to put up pictures of cops because they will go after him. Then he decides to put up a picture of Lil’Ze as it will get him an internship at newspaper. The movie ends with runts walking around City of God asking who of them could write to create black list to kill drug lords to take over their business and rule. The movie is original as it creates something new. It breaks out from traditional fiction, creating Modernism. As Rocket tells the story in unbiased and gives particular view of the events. The movie does a great job at presenting a nonlinear narrative, which starts at end with “Rocket standing in the middle before Lil’Ze and Ned start the war. Next follows the beginning of 1960’s and Rocket’s narrative, the middle follows 1970’s and Rocket’s love for photography, a girl, ad smoking. The end follows with 1980’s, a war, Rocket’s success with newspaper, and revealing a new name. The achievements that the film received was due its technical excellence. Cesar Charlone a cinematographer of the film used different shots in three distinct eras. The first being when the favela was not yet fully developed, it had a lot of space, felt relaxed which made camera move freely. But, during the ‘70s, the changes in camera began to show. The camera was going much closer to characters which created claustrophobic feeling in enclosed space of favela. It looks like during that era, Lil’Ze was shot in low angle showing that he was more powerful. In addition, cameras show how the life in favelas is chaotic and unauthorized. Furthermore, lighting and color was used brilliantly during two much different eras. Audience can see how the 60’s era overused gold and yellow light, giving it a disturbing feel. Those colors have a lot of negativity, representing impatience of Lil’Dice (Lil’Ze) It also represents his lack of emotions when he killed Rocket’s brother Goose. Portraying that lack of compassion with make him a psychopath in future. Whereas, the 70’s and 80’s change bright colors to gloomy grey and dark lighting, which represents pessimism of families and little kids who realize that they will never get out of favelas, they are now slaves to their creation of own oblivion