The City of God (2002)

CITY OF GOD

“For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.”
-Gerald Manley Hopkins

Telling an honest story of a place just outside Rio Dejanero, where limbs are not lovely, and eyes are not lovely, Director Fernando Meirelles’ displays a genre-bending epic of a city of slums, and drugs, gang violence, and ten thousand places of rape and features of faces oppressed. Part documentary and story, and part social commentary, this film takes the viewer into the heart of the gun-ridden seemingly god-forsaken world of children who aspire to be a “hood,” and an entry-level position of drug-running and message delivery for the gang, can land you a corner office in munitions distribution and “territory” management. “Rocket,” is the narrator and hero of this film, navigating his way through the haze of crime and drugs in the 60’s and 70’s, and into the street war of the 80’s, saving himself, and ironically precipitating the end of the ongoing crisis, with nothing more than a 35mm camera, and an accidental misprint of the pictures he takes from the “inside” that lands him into a photojournalist role almost by accident. Characters develop as the landscape jumps back and forth between the generations, where the back-story on the leader of a senseless war with senseless killing, includes a murdered cousin, a raped wife, and a former life as a calm and quotidian bus-driver. We never get the perspective on the situation from outside the slum, and the limited perspective puts the viewer in first-hand accounts, with all the bleakness and hopelessness that is to be expected. The violence seems senseless, but to the little boys who live in the City of God, the violence is supposed vindication for a world that has pushed them aside, the sex and rape and inferred orgies followed by blood-spill and terror as well as laughter—all in the same cinematographic sentence—- is not Hollywood sensuality or sentimentalism, it’s little boys becoming men:

“Listen man, I smoke, I snort… I’ve been begging on the street since I was just a baby. I’ve cleaned windshields at stop lights. I’ve polished shoes, I’ve robbed, I’ve killed… I ain’t no kid, no way. I’m a real man.”

In the City of God, justice is never served, the bodies of children, never vindicated, and the gang violence is perpetuated to the next generation—a far cry from our hope of a new earth, a renewed ‘city’ of God:

“Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
—Revelation 21:3,4

Film

I’ve been meaning to pursue my interest in film for some time now. Most of my “cultural engagement” comes to me through books and articles that purpose to inform the reader of the ‘zeitgeist’ of the day. Often, it seems, that what is spoken in acedemia can be a bit removed from the way things are expressed in the arts, relegated to a theoretical world of historical anylasis and morose philosophical dialogue. The last CD I was really excited about was Hootie and the Blow Fish: Cracked Rear Mirror, or something like that, and after a short stint with PASTE magazine, I found that I was more interested in the short section on films and the occassial shorts that come with the handy DVD than I was in the difficult-to-navigate world of music criticism. I still feel too far behind in music, and my taste-buds for music seem to feel like they do when you have a cold or the flu: there are only a few things I like. I’m open for learning, but also realize that music for me will most like not be my gig…pun intended.

I’m on a trial membership with Netflix, and yesterday was my first arrival. Last night I watched City of God. I’ll post my thoughts later today. But I hope that this will be the first of more to follow.