Director: Fernando Meirelles
Writers: Paulo Lins (novel), Bráulio Mantovani
Stars: Alexandre Rodrigues, Alice Braga, Leandro Firmino, Douglas Silva, Seu Jorge, Philipe Haagensen
Studio: Miramax (2003) Originally released in January 2003 to critical praise, Fernando Meirelles’ masterful yet brutal
City of God receded from view until Miramax re-released it for
Oscar consideration. And while it failed to even garner a foreign-language-film nomination that year, the alternately intense and ******** depiction of Rio’s desperate favelas has only grown in stature and power.
Based on the novel by Paulo Lins (and adapted by Bráulio Mantovani), Meirelles turned an unflinching eye on a world forgotten by the wealthy and powerful, ignored by police and indifferent to law and order.
City of God set the template for other shocking urban films to follow (not to
mention a revival of “favela funk” by music-marauders like Diplo and M.I.A.). But whereas other cinematic studies like Gomorrah (about modern Sicily) and the documentary Dancing with the Devil only wallowed in such viciousness, this film plunged deeper, gripped harder, and yet always allowed
glints of humanity into such darkness.
City of God’s harrowing depiction of daily violence in the favelas exemplifies in shocking detail the Hobbesian view of life as “nasty, brutish, and short,” but the film never casts judgment. While chaos and bloodshed rule the world of protagonist Rocket
and those of his generation—psychotic druglord Li’l Zé, groovy playboy Benny and solemn Knockout Ned (singer Seu Jorge, in his breakout role)—
City of God elucidates an underlying symmetry, exhibiting if not poetic justice, then the street version of the same.