City of God: Depressing. Shocking. Brilliant.
Civilization. Sanity. Peace. Brotherhood. Throw these words out of the window. Because, with respect to the City of God, they are not only an aberration and theoretical, but also, fantastic. A city where every unarmed person is equivalent to a eunuch, a city where anarchy is the only form of order. A city where massacre is a rule, peace an exception. A city thriving on the fringes of insanity and its people clinging on to the feeble dim of shallow hope.
Adapted from Paulo Lins’s novel, the movie is a gut wrenching account of the people living in the City of God( Rio-di-Jenerio’s slum). Narrated by Rocket, a wannabe photographer, who unlike his brothers, and the majority of the people of the city of Gods is not obsessed with guns. Or, taking life. He admits he is not cut out for that stuff. The movie is a first hand story about an ordinary guy who grew up in the City of God, his tryst with this abnormal world, where killing is almost as common place as is the lack of it on the streets of a so called normal, civilized world. Almost everyone and everything is corrupt, the city’s name is ironic in the very sense because it looks as if it is this very city that has been abandoned by the Gods. Most of the cops are as dangerous as the hoodlums dominating the street, a child’s definition of becoming a man is this – I smoke, I snort, I’ve killed and robbed, I’m a man. Robot narrates the story and the movie almost unfolds in a chapter wise format, delineating each character’s background and bind them to the main story with seamless ease.
The movie opens to a mad chicken chase. An entire gang is running after the chicken, a symbolic representation of the narrator’s unending desire to flee from the same madness. The manner in which the scene launches till the point it concludes is simply amazing. The cinematography here is just magical, for a few seconds the camera almost becomes a living entity running with the spirit of chicken and possessing the heart to break free. It has to be one of the most kinetic opening sequences in the movies. In host of other scenes as well, the cinematography of the movie stands out, be it capturing the blood laden streets and by lanes of the favelas, or be it the violent action scenes, or capturing the symmetric houses(probably the only thing in the place that exists in order and symmetry). The editing too is top notch, movie switches time so casually, but, not for once does it looks discontinuous, all the parts merge into each seamlessly and the movie succesfully emerges as one gigantic story composed of different sub-plots embedded to each other.
I was pleasantly amazed to find that the movie had only one formal actor, rest all were kids from the favela itself(although they went under a rigorous acting workshop later!). The performances are just so natural, there is no forced histrionics, no sense of lingering in any scene, the movie is spellbinding and unravels with blinding ferocity.
The movie tells in its own chilling way that how crime never pays, that how one can never win in the world of crime, how one can never be the boss when everyone is wrong around, that the transition from being ruled to a ruler can be done with unbelievable ease, that this world of violence can come back and bite anyone and everyone. City of God is a depressing testimony to this fact.
Tags: City of God, Crime, Culture., Foreign Film, Opening scenes, Uncivilised, Violence
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
I had been wanting to write on this. Thanks for bringing this movie up. Truly a lesson on how to make a movie on a city or a mob culture by focusing on the root causes, the attraction towards violence(the scene when Benny is said to be the most coolest hood in the whole city) and the systemic rot in the soceity
wow I should watch this! Where though? Maybe in theatres in NJ?
This is a fabulous movie, just love every moment of it. The editing, the performances, the camera work, everything was just top class.
Red Soul,
Cidade de Deus (City of God) was released long time back. Now your best bet is your nearest DVD rental store.
Red Soul,
Haven’t seen the movie? Get up and RUN to your nearest DVD store. It is THAT good!
it is on youtube
One word. Freakin’ Awesome (alrite, i can’t bloody count but I can feel). Damn, CoG got so much of kinetic energy.
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You feel sad for people who get involved in crime without apparent reason. I loved the way it was shot.
Brilliant movie, yes.
Simply brilliant movie. The best opening sequence I can even remember. I should watch it again now. @Tanul, thanks for writing n reminding me of this movie.
BTW, the opening sequence that everyone goes gaga over… 1 shot… luck shot… shot of a lifetime… it JUST HAPPENED.
But they tried it atleast ;-)
slumdog millionaire reminded me of city of god and how brilliant that film is …
@Sags: In what way did Slumdog remind you of City of God?
For me it is the best film i ever seen
i smoke! i drink ! i dope ! and i watch movies like “city of god” !. im a man ! (of taste)
I saw this movie at the age of 16 and I realised that there’s a world beyond hollywood
in lot of ways tanul ..besides the obvious slum boy connection , the tone of the film, brothers , gangsters…raw …music score.even the elder brother salim’s hair do
..cudnt help the comparison . they may be very different but watching slumdog reminded me of city of god.
I remember being completely lost in the movie as it went from scene to scene. There was hardly any room to breath and hardly a moment wasted. My favourite character was the kid who became a gangster by killing all his seniors (I forget his name, its been a while since I saw the film).
What a Cinema ….
Truly and brilliantly amazing. At first when I heard the name I had no idea that what I am going to see, though the name was quite interesting to create curiosity to watch a film. The opening shot of the film where they have shown cuttings where a knife is being sharpen to and fro with a Brazilian folk background score and the chicken sequence, I was speech less and so much involved in it, that if at that moment if somebody had distracted me god knows what would have been my reaction (might have endup in a tight slap lols…).
The story telling is so brilliantly done … and the era from 60s to 90s and the change of costume accordingly has been portrayed brilliantly…
This film is amongst my bestest favourite film…
City of God deserves *****
I think the movie is rubbish and a waste of time. You just want stupid escapist violence but with a pseudo-message from a foreign country so you can feel like you’re an intellectual. Read a book for christ’s sake; and instead consider donating the money you would have spent on shit movies like this to a school in an indian village or something if you think you’re such a good person.