Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/visual-arts-film-studies/1448032-city-of-god
https://studentshare.org/visual-arts-film-studies/1448032-city-of-god.
The film portrays very scenes of bloodshed and barbarity. For instance, the film bombards shocking images of brutality that leave an individual emotionally numb. Meirelles paints a horrible convincing portrait of young spoilt youth with shattered innocence. It becomes a pity to view young children roaming around the streets with guns giving all their lives for the sake of their gangs. The paper, therefore, analyses the film on issues relating to planning, design, culture, environment, and society.
Proficient planning tilts between the bureaucratically mundane and wildly imaginative. It becomes hard to navigate the miasma of rules and regulations yet maintain a social vision of a movie set. ‘City of God’ has outstandingly undergone planning to reveal the influence built by the environment on its characters. The movie reveals social networks in a planned community built to replace a community destroyed in a natural disaster. Moreover, pandemonium foments in the characters’ lives at odds with their ordered and sterile public housing. In addition, the movie has been designed to reveal the poor and life-risking life of slums in modern society.
The film portrays a society full of moral deficiency. As an economically poor slum, the youth involve themselves in acts of outrageous violence. Crimes appear to be the only option in the moral and economic wasteland of the Brazilian favelas. The slum portrays a place full of gangsters whose gun-troubling horror follows cruel belly laughs. Moreover, their relentless actions tend to be underscored by unforgiving poverty. The film revolves around a society that is poor both economically and politically. Drug abuse and drug trafficking is not astonishing deed in society. The main character in the movie, Rocket, narrates his journey in the slums of Rio de Janeiro where he witnesses for two decades greed, rape, barbarity, and revenge.
The movie portrays a poorly developed environment not worth human sustainability. The city is depicted to maintain low environmental measures. The place was initially built for those who could not afford housing and living essentials. Poor infrastructure, housing, security, and lack of employment opportunities eventually led to the growth of gangs and murderous drug dealers. The city portrays the hardships people have to experience and go through in order to make ends meet in their lives. The movie further shows how the residents of the city live in doubt, as they fear frequent bloody gunfires from neighborhood kids who kill efficiently as the grownups. The city lacks a peaceful environment where an individual can settle and maintain a prosperous life. The slum has no electricity, paved streets, or even transportation.
Crime and football are depicted as the cultural ways out of the slum. Meirelles portrays a bunch of kids who gather around to play football but all of a sudden, this becomes history as three hoodlums find their way onto the pitch seeking refuge from police officers. Suddenly the football game ends up in a violent game of intimidation and rape. As the gangsters kill the chicken, Rocket is terrified by the thought that he is about to face murder but this turns out to be the opposite. The sacrificial purpose of the chicken portrays with the force of a blunt instrument how cheap life has turned to be for the residents of the slum. It also conveys how aggression and victimization have become fused together. The wise guys, their stoic womenfolk, their cowering subordinates, and the dead bodies surrounding them are all chickens mostly all children.
In conclusion, the movie portrays a morally decayed society encompassed in the bondage of poverty. The slum lacks the social responsibility of the residents especially the youth of the future generation. The movie exemplifies how modern society is declining due to its lack of social understanding in maintaining a reliable environment to enhance its growth. In addition, the government has failed in its responsibility in maintaining sufficient security, employment opportunities, and a sustainable environment in society, especially in the slum areas. There is a need to also re-innovate the slums to better housing and efficient infrastructure. Therefore, it is the responsibility of both the government and individuals to maintain and build a better tomorrow for the future generation.
Read More