City of God - Film of Despair - Term Paper Example

Powerful and gripping it may be, but ultimately Cidade de Deus is a film of despair, offering a one-dimensional view of urban culture in a Brazil where social divisions appear too wide to bridge, and where millions are too brutalized by violence and poverty to contribute to any process of change.’ Discuss. City of God (Cidade de Deus) is a brilliant piece of film making. The reality with which brutality and violence is presented to the audience alongside the circumstances of their happening is of highest artistic merit. Yet, in spite of all its cinematic accomplishments, the movie’s utility as an agent of social change is very limited indeed. It is this assertion that would serve as the thesis for this paper. The authenticity for the film and its narrative comes from the fact that it was based on a real shanty town in a corner of Rio de Janeiro. It captures the lives of its inhabitants across three generations in one of the most dangerous places that the civilized world had seen. Consistent with its gangster theme, the movie depicts “rise and fall of petty empires, the brief supernova of gangster superstardom, the overturning of an older order by a yet meaner, more ruthless younger one; these events are lit up, here and there, by little spurts of recognizable behaviour, even love”. In other words, it is a movie targeted to a young male audience. In doing so, the movie loses its appeal to a larger audience, thereby reducing a widespread social impact that is expected of all social documentaries (fictitious, re-enacted or conjured) (Corliss, 2003). That is not so say that the movie is an endorsement of nihilism. Beneath the surface of violence and distress is the finer expression of tragedy, which anchors disparate parts of the narrative. City of God is not just another run-of-mill gangster movie. The gangsters of Rio de Janeiro are unique. The director pays attention to detail in showing the idiosyncrasies of these gangsters. The portrayal of these youngsters comes across as genuine. For example they are shown to be “scruffy, dirty, scampering around on the dusty play-fields and squalid alleys, their body language expressing the weightlessness of their thin bones and scrawny chests, their clothes just any old rags, their feet bare or sporting flip-flops” (Corliss, 2003). This description will suit the young inhabitants of any urban slum, but what sets the youngsters of City of God apart is the fact that they carry guns. In a society where force is the only way of life and where “might is right”, a gun acts as a symbol of social status. The more sophisticated the machine, the more fear and awe that it elicits from the society (Corliss, 2003). The central character in the movie is that of Alexandre Rodrigues, who plays the role of “Rocket”, someone who does not fit into the gangster setup as he explores possible options for livelihood. The word “livelihood” may seem irrelevant to the lives of teenagers in civil societies but not quite in the City of God. The narrative essentially revolves around how Rocket grows up in the hostile environment of his slum and how he finally manages to break away (if only superficially) from the volatile conditions to a more organized one in the form of a professional photographer. Rocket might be the central character in the film, but to call him the protagonist would be inappropriate. In fact, the different contexts of his life were the real focal points of the story. Right from his early days with his brother (who was part of the notorious Tender Trio) to his acquaintance with the diabolical Li’l Dice, Rocket’s life is full of uncertainties and risks. Once again, while the film invokes disgust and outrage as a result of the inhuman behaviour of its characters, it fails to propose an alternative way of life. It is as if, violence and death are the “only” order of things in the impoverished and oppressed communities living in the City of God (The Economist, 2003). The evolution of Li’l Dice, from an aspiring gangster 10 years of age to the cold-blooded, ruthless and ambitious leader of the pack is shown with cinematic excellence. But, the qualities mentioned above were not acquired by Li’l Dice as a result of his experiences. Instead, a taste of what to come in the future was to be seen during his very first participation in a Tender Trio operation. After the Tender Trio leave the looted motel with the money, the young Li’l Dice satiates his sinister longing to kill human beings by shooting the staff and clientele of the motel. This merciless and unnecessary killing of innocent people sets the theme for his subsequent adventures. But, as many critics have pointed out, it is difficult to fathom what the moral lessons from all these sequence of events. In defence of the director of the film, it is not his obligation to preach to his audience about what is right and wrong. On the other hand, making sense of the carnage induced by Li’l Dice and his accomplices remains a challenge to the audience. In this regard, it is difficult to conceive the movie’s contribution to positive social change (Publishers Weekly, 2006). As noted critic Wesley Morris points out, “theres something distasteful in the rote way this film introduces us to two dozen hapless, heartless kids and doesnt care enough to make us feel for them. It would rather doll up the slum and memorialize the trigger-happy thugs infesting it”. But its roots lie in the evolution of Fernando Meirelles as a director of feature films from his humble origins as an ad-filmmaker in his native Brazil(Schwarz, 2001). The characterization of Li’l Dice must have been the most challenging to director Meirelles. From his first victim in the form of Rocket’s brother to the later drug-dealing, megalomaniacal gang leader to his ruthless control of the place’s cartel a consistent and coherent picture of Li’l Dice emerges. Meirelles must be credited for his stellar role in bringing this challenging narrative to screen. All through Li’l Dice’s different adventures, the narrative alternates between the innocuous to the diabolical. For example, for every horrifying scene of Li’l dice’s atrocities, there’s a “touristic splendour” usually involving Rocket. Yet, if feature films have anything to do with inclusiveness, this “sweat and adrenaline infested machismo cocktail” has nothing to offer women audiences. Excluding nearly one half of potential audience makes City of God a niche movie, targeted to the young adult male age group. To this extent, the film does nothing to bridge existing inequalities between the genders in what is a male-dominated Brazilian society. The movie’s ineffectiveness in serving as an agent of changing social policies in Brazil is captured accurately in the following passage: “If theres an indictment here, it never surfaces. Taken from a Paulo Lins novel and based on a true story (as the film is happy to boast at its conclusion), the film sensualizes the violence cycle and makes a fetish of poverty. What ought to be devastating and tragic about City of God is discomfiting in its offhandedness. This isnt a movie; its a soulless pictorial.” (Schwarz, 2001) Another unusual aspect of the film is the way it demystifies the darker realities of Rio de Janeiro. For example, movies such as That Night in Rio that have achieved critical acclaim focus on the genteel aspects of life in the city as opposed to City of God that concentrates on the city’s underworld through out. There’s no equivalent film in the post Second World War period that depicts the lives of drug kingpins and their counterparts in such a electrifying way. In fact, the tempo for it is set right at the beginning scene and is maintained throughout. Director Meirelles employs subtlety as well as he shows examples of “young people managing to carve out successful careers”. But disappointingly, most of the rest of the film concerns “unbroken cycles of squalor”, making the social class divisions all the starker (Schwarz, 2001). Alongside the co-director Kátia Lund, Meirelles goes to great lengths to keep the audience engrossed in the story. The narrator of the story, Rocket, appears in periodic interludes to inform the audience about the sequence to come later. The directors also employ the technique of repeating some important scenes that were left incomplete earlier. Hence, the sequences are not chronologically arranged but interwoven based on the context. By employing this device, the filmmakers take away the strain of watching a two hour long movie that has generous displays of violence. Also, by using this technique, the directors are able to show how “a perceived hero becomes a villain, and characters we assume are going to be around at the end suddenly exit the City of God” (Kavanagh, 2002). So much for the film’s technical merits, but in terms of its emphasis on providing a solution to the chaotic life of the City of God, it fails. For example, “If one of the moral responsibilities of the movies is to put you in places where youd never go and live lives youd never live, then "City of God" is great moviemaking. This one admits no other moral responsibilities. It merely gazes pitilessly at the real, and maybe that reality is too hard to take. It offers scant optimism to policymakers of any stripe. It advises liberals that social programs are pointless when applied to the violent vitality of the streets, and it advises conservatives that stern bromides about responsibility are as ineffective against the will to violence as a fistful of feathers. It says man is dark and doomed and stupid. But it also says hes alive and kicking and magnificent.” (Kavanagh, 2002) City of God contains a so many subplots that are inevitably set in the crime setup of the Rio de Janeiro slum. The movie’s inescapable portrayal of helplessness, misery and murder makes the ethically conscious ask some questions of it. For example, the desperation of the impoverished masses of City of God makes them lose perspective about all moral considerations. This no holds barred violence can be difficult to comprehend for the audience. But, with a little conscious effort, one can see the inevitability of the criminal culture in the given social and political context. When seen in the backdrop of a failed and corrupt political system of the Brazil of the 1960’s, it is easier to understand the goings on. In this sense, the film is a major achievement for Fernando Meirelles and his team. Although the movie is an indigenous one with an all Brazilian cast and crew, its appeal is universal. This is vindicated by the recognition it received in the Academy of Motion Pictures the year subsequent to its release. It shows to the audiences in the First World, what life could be like in the depraved parts of the Third World (Kavanagh, 2002). The movie’s unsuitability to women audiences is further supported by one particular scene, where Li’l Ze rapes the wife of a local bus conductor. This makes the bus conductor very bitten and forces him to set upon a course of revenge. Again, this sub-plot contributes to the already overflowing depictions of violence. Cinematographer Cesar Charlone has done a splendid job in employing sophisticated camera wielding techniques, although there is nothing sophisticated about the action being captured. Also, every actor do their designated roles to perfection. In the words of a renowned critic, “Every actor contributes. You sense each knows his character inside and out and would never betray that identity. Mantovanis script makes its points within the context of its storytelling. Nothing is gratuitous, exploitative or heavy-handed” (Margolis, 2004). Nevertheless, the movie is a tragedy to the core, although some of the events are not quite tragic. In it, the principal characters fully accept violence and quick death as a way of life. Quite ironically, the ambient visuals of the relaxed Brazilian atmosphere fail to dispel the hellish image that the story depicts (Kavanagh, 2002). City of God shows audiences in the western world the bitter realities of a world that they would never have imagined existed. Usually, any references to Rio de Janeiro are associated with pleasant, exotic vacation spots; and not a shanty town under the control of wild and temperamental hooligans. The film succeeds in the realistic and natural portrayal of these gangsters, which is not a surprise given the fact that the directors employed actual people from the slums of Rio de Janeiro to make it “an eye opening experience” to the sinister aspects of impoverished urban settlements. In this regard, the film fulfils its purpose. Nevertheless, in the final analysis, the movie’s contribution in bringing together disparate social classes and reducing the friction between them is minimal to non-existent (Margolis, 2004). There are comparisons made between City of God and the Hollywood super-hit Goodfellas. To an extent it is an accurate description of the movie, but there is more to it than that. The most striking difference between the two classics is the lack of a Protagonist in the former. The movie, based on real-life events in Rio de Janeiro of the 1960’s is quite an accurate account of gangster lives in that period. But there is another area where the movie appears a little redundant. For example, “In other words, it all feels a little too familiar. Too bad it just doesnt seem fresh. Despite being about Brazilian gangs, a topic most audiences probably dont think much about, one gets the feeling that, no matter the location in the world, a gang is the same anywhere you go - worshipping guns, money, power, and pride. And the depiction of such a lifestyle seems to be the same from movie to movie, including this one”. (Margolis, 2004) In essence, to appreciate City of God is to “experience what is so intoxicatingly alluring about the criminal life” (Harazim, 1997). As a result, the discerning patrons of motion pictures can only watch this film with a sense of detachment. What works perfectly in the movie are the depictions of all the characters involved. The various characters don’t confirm to any stereotype but rather exhibit individual traits and personalities and, more interestingly, “make a case for the theory of hard-wired human behaviour” (Harazim, 1997). Also, each major character in the film has a recognizable personality and the audience gets an indication of “how deep each ones inclination toward crime is due to natural-born tendencies as opposed to social and economic influences”. For instance, “Lil Ze, the most ruthless of the leaders, had a murderous streak even as a young child. His partner, Benny (Philippe Haagensen), goes along but appears to value honour and hip-ness over violence. Meanwhile, Rocket tries to begin a life of crime after being frustrated with earning money at legitimate jobs, but finds he just doesnt have it in him. One last major characters lust for vengeance eventually overpowers his sense of decency.” (Harazim, 1997) It all implies that the evils of society are best remedied not with blanket policies but rather with “case-by-case strategies” – a few of these hoods could be reformed, a few others may not be quite and the rest don’t actually need to be. In the meanwhile, the audiences are invited to regard the whole culture of gangsters with poignancy and trepidation. By the time the movie comes to a close some time in the early 1980s, the viewers are shown images of a new generation of young kids with guns in hand; continuing the legacy of their yesteryear brothers. It is a pity that these sorts of stories are so easy to find and film. But, as an agent of social progress and as an aid to policy makers for closing the gap between the haves and have-nots, the film is a disappointment. To the contrary, the culture of violence, anarchy and wild ambition gets undeserved screen-time. Bibliography: Harazim, D. (Nov 1997). The novelist of the Favela.,. World Press Review, 44, n11. p.29(1). City of God. (August 7, 2006)., Publishers Weekly, 253, 31. p.29(2).  Margolis, M. (March 1, 2004). Fernando Meirelles; The Brazilian Blockbuster. Newsweek International, p.52.  The city of God, or someone. (Sept 28, 1996). The Economist (US), 340, n7985. p.56(1).  City of God and gripes; Violence in Brazil, (Jan 25, 2003)., The Economist (US), 366, 8308. p.NA.  Corliss, R. (Jan 20, 2003). Gangs of Rio de Janeiro: Kid killers on the loose in the blistering City of God, Time, 161, 3. p.140.  Fawcett, M. (Jan 17, 2003)., City of God., TLS Times Literary Supplement, 5207. p.18-1.  Kavanagh, P (Jan 4, 2002)., Bywords., TLS Times Literary Supplement, 5153. p.14(1).  Schwarz, R. (Nov-Dec 2001)., City of God., New Left Review, 12. p.102(11). Read More