07/24/10 - Cidade de Deus (City of God)

Cidade de Deus (City of God) (2002, 130 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317248/

City of God was the highest rated film on IMDb that I had not seen (for now it's replaced by Toy Story 3 but I imagine that'll drop off in a few months). Also, from Criticker, I was getting a suggested score of 10/10 which isn't all that often. The premise didn't really intrigue me but, being that I felt I finally needed to check it out, I decided to watch it on a whim.

The film follows two kids from a slum provence of Rio de Janeiro called Cidade de Deus (City of God). The two kids take drastically different approaches to life. The first is nicknamed Rocket (Buscapé or Buscapé Criança when he's Young Rocket) and is played by Luis Otávio (younger) and Alexandre Rodrigues (older). The other is nicknamed Li'l Zé (Zé Pequeno) when he's older but Li'l Dice (Dadinho) when he's younger. He is played by Leandro Firmino and Douglas Silva at those respective ages. In short: Rocket aspires to be a journalist and Li'l Zé wants to be a drug dealer. Thus the movie follows these different lifestyles. Also with important roles are: Benny (Bené), a mutual friend to Rocket and Li'l Zé, played by Phellipe Haagensen; Carrot (Sandro Cenoura), a rival drug dealer of Li'l Zé's, played by Matheus Nachtergaele; and Knockout Ned (Mané Galinha), a friend of Carrot's, played by Seu Jorge. There's quite a few other minor characters that come and go from the two main characters' lives.

First I'll address the things that arise from this film being foreign. The most obvious thing from reading the above is how everyone has about three different names. Really, everyone just goes by a nickname and it can get pretty confusing really fast if you don't tackle this at the beginning. Basically, it reminded me of Goodfellas or something where everyone had some nickname. I stopped the film at the beginning for a bit and got all the names in order and this helped in the long run. Really, I don't think it's that big of an issue if you make some effort to remember stuff. Most of the important characters are given some background information so you know which ones you should really focus on anyway. Next, Portuguese is a fast language and it sounds nothing like Spanish or English. The most recent foreign film I'd seen was Fellini's 8½ and I had quite a bit of problems with the speed of Italian. However, I think this was mainly an issue with the subtitles not being on the screen long enough. The subtitles for City of God were fine so I never had this issue. I was actually just surprised at how fast and weird Portuguese was.

Okay. Now on to the movie. I've mentioned many times before that I'm a huge character development guy. You can't just throw some cool looking effects out there or have a really stylized movie and expect me to like it if it doesn't have memorable and well developed characters. So, I'll address first Rocket and then Li'l Zé. First, Rocket is the "good guy" of the story so he's painted in a much more favorable light. He does do some wrongs such as buying drugs but this actually seems like something every single person in the slum does so it's hard to say that it's actually something "bad." Still, he seems a flawed character as he tries to get with Angélica and follow his dream of working as a photographer or journalist. On the other side of the coin we have Li'l Zé. Li'l Zé is the "bad guy" and sadly has very little character development. Li'l Zé never really has a moment where he does something to make even a fleshed out character. He basically came off really flat to me. There's the one scene where it's a going away party for Benny where for a little bit we see him face a problem but he handles it in such a way that is just too stereotypical for his character. Overall, I didn't like the Li'l Zé character not because he was the antagonist (in a way) but because there was just zero character development.

The other memorable character in here is Benny. Benny is extremely likable and has some development. He has a goal, he's flawed, he has conflicts: he seems real - probably even more real than Rocket. Benny was the best character in the whole film in my opinion. He's also the central figure in the best scene in the movie: the above mentioned party. The scene builds tension really well as see Li'l Zé faced with a conflict. Quickly things escalate out of control and Li'l Zé and Benny get in a fight. Just at this moment the dance music changes and we have a strobe light flashing. Thus, we have this incredibly tense scene that is only being really seen intermittently. It's really well done because it adds to the tension in the scene.

I feel with this movie being titled City of God that the slum should also be mentioned. It seems an integral part of the real story (City of God is based on a real life drug war) but I didn't feel it played as big a role in the movie as it could have. I got the impression that in real life the oppression of the slum atmosphere quickly took its tole on someone and just would wear them down. I think Slumdog Millionaire handled this grimy and gritty atmosphere really well. I just never felt this burden and pressure in City of God. It actually seemed a little too clean everywhere but maybe that was just me.

Finally, the thing I'll remember most about City of God when I look back on it is the cutting. City of God is very unique in this aspect. There's lot of quick cuts and just overall different cuts than you'd expect in a standard movie. One cool thing it does is sometimes split the screen into panels and focus on multiple things at once. The panels change size as well depending on which part the director wants us to notice more. City of God is littered with little things like this in how it's shot that really make it stand out. It makes it a bit "artsy" but that's fine with me since I think it works really well.

Overall, I gave this film a 7/10. City of God is a conflicting character drama where neither of the characters are expertly developed and this really hurts it. However, the film did do a lot of other stuff right such as expertly framing and capturing some really cool shots, having Benny be really likable, and doing some amazing cutting and other camera tricks.