And behind door number 22... a guide to some music of the more traditional kind
Catherine Munn and Jacob Martin list their Top 5 programmes to watch over the festive period.
And behind door number nine... some dazzling musical delights
The complete arts guide, for week 9
Although frequently described as the ‘Brazilian Goodfellas’, to classify Fernando Meirelles’ 2002 film City of God as such would be to fail to recognise the film’s own unique quality. Certainly both films are similar in many ways; each is outrageously entertaining, combining music, colour and violence to create an intense viewing experience. And both tackle familiar gangster-film themes, such as the rise and fall of particular individuals, and the inevitable destruction such a life involves.
But whereas Goodfellas has a slick, polished feel to it, City of God is rougher around the edges. Here there are no suit-clad men strutting round fancy New York bars, but mere boys in vests and shorts running restlessly around hazy slums.
The film documents three decades of gang violence in the ironically named slum – or "favela" - ‘City of God’, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. The story begins by tracing the lives of three popular young men with a Robin Hood approach to crime named 'The Tender Trio', before moving on to the rise of the frightening Li’l Zé and his subsequent war with hippy-turned-hood Knockout Ned.
The frenetic tone of the film is established from the very first scene. The camera cuts frequently from a knife being sharpened and people merrily cooking to an apprehensive looking chicken awaiting his fate. This chicken makes a dash for freedom, only to be found and gleefully chased by Li’l Zé and his hood, and somehow ends up in the middle of a shoot-out between the hood and the police.
As the film goes on it becomes more and more clear that the residents of City of God have as much hope of escape from the favela as that chicken - as the tagline says: ‘If you run it will get you. If you stay it will eat you’.
What’s appealing about City of God is that it does not impose any moral judgement on proceedings, but simply shows and presents. Certainly awful things do happen – most memorably when a boy who looks around 12 or 13 is forced by Li’l Zé to choose to shoot one of two even younger boys. Scenes like this need no dark music or sombre narrator to inform us how terrible the situation is, we just know. Instead of reflecting over how awful things are, we wonder ‘why?’, and what could drive a human being to behave in such a way.
This unobtrusive moral stance is reinforced by the impartial attitude of the narrator, Rocket. He tells the story in a frank and simple manner, and in spite of admitting that he does not fit into the Hood lifestyle and is scared by the likes of Li’l Zé, never condemns them. So it makes sense that his dream is to become a photographer, an occupation which tells stories through capturing images, unobscured by words and rhetoric.
This parallel of photography is central to the film, and has significance in that the story is based on a real-life situation. We are reminded of this with a jolt during the end credits, where a real-life news bulletin is played mirroring the fictionalised version which appeared in the film. Whilst offering no solution to the problem in the City of God favela, the film does – like photography – succeed in presenting and publicising the problem. As an inventive, entertaining and important creation, City of God is a film everyone should see.
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