![]() |
Violence is a way of life in Fernando Meirelles calling card sensation City of God |
Director: Fernando Meirelles, Katia Lund (co-director)
Cast: Alexandre Rodrigues (Rocket), Leandro Firmino (Li'l
Zé), Phellipe Haagensen (Benny), Douglas Silva (Li'l Dice), Jonathan Haagensen
(Shaggy), Matheus Nachtergaele (Carrot), Seu Jorge (Knockout Ned), Jefechander
Suplino (Clipper), Alice Braga (Angélica), Emerson Gomes (Stringy), Edson
Oliveira (Older Stringy)
After Parasite’s
win for Best Picture, it’s easy to remember the last foreign language film that
made such a comparative impact at the Oscars – and it didn’t even win anything!
Capturing the public imagination, City of
God is that most American of things: a gangster film. Chronicling the life
and death danger of the lawless slums of Rio de Janerio in the 1960s and 1970s,
the film is an electric mixture of Latin and US film-making, a compelling shot
of adrenalin that captured the imagination of the film-going public and made many
Hollywood films look staid and dull.
Shot on location with a largely non-professional cast, the
film uses as our window into this world aspirant photographer Rocket (Alexandre
Rodrigues), who has a front-row seat for an emerging (true life) gang war that
erupts in the slumps between unstable psychopath Li'l Zé (Leandro Firmino) and
his rival Carrot (Matheus Nachtergaele) and bereaved former sniper turned bus
conductor and killer Knockout Ned (Seu Jorge). Starting at the end, the film
rewinds through time and moves from perspective to perspective in a series of
dynamic short stories that slowly merge and meld together to complete the
film’s whole.
The film is directed by Meirelles (who got an Oscar
nomination) and Katia Lund (who didn’t). Meirelles invited Lund to collaborate
with him on the project, and is generally credited with the film’s look, editing
style, frenetic pace and distinctive style of sharply exposed Latin colours
mixed with the look of a rock video, all dynamic angles and immersive action.
Lund bought her documentary realism to the film, as well as working closely
with the actors and helping to shape their parts of the story. Agreeing to take
a specific “co-director” credit probably cost Lund the nomination, and it feels
inexplicable she was unrecognised today, even more so since Lund has pioneered
several successful TV series based around the world of the film.
Controversy aside, it’s a high water-mark certainly for
Meirelles who has never quite managed to match it since (The Constant Gardener remains his best work since, marrying the
dynamism here with one of Le Carré’s most emotional and strongest stories).
With its lashings of Scorsese, Tarantino and De Palma (among others), City of God remains a hugely engaging
and engrossing gangster flick that really feels like it captures the threat and
grimy reality of the streets of Brazil. Each section of the city we see feels
like a lawless wild west, where guns rule, the police have no say and a whole
population of ordinary people keep their heads down and just try to avoid
getting caught (literally) in the crossfire.
In this world violence is endemic, life is a short and
brutish cycle of slaughter where danger leads inevitably to death,
short-termism is the norm and a series of essentially childish young men see
the excitement of crime turn into the brutality of a life of violence. None
more so than the film’s vicious dark heart, Li'l Zé a young man with a
flickering temper, a love of violence and death, barely able to relate to other
people, unanchored in the world whose life is a self-destructive quest to be the
biggest fish in his pond. Played with a swaggering panache by Leandro Firmino
(and a chilling coldness as a child by Douglas Silva), the self-named Li'l Zé
dominates the film as the sort of life-wire threat Joe Pesci used to be for
Scorsese, never certain whether he will laugh or shoot.
Which makes him perfect for the unpredictability of the
slums, where everyone wants to be a hood, drugs are rife and crime and murder
is a legitimate way of living. The film splices together several short story
narratives to illustrated this with Altmanesque confidence. Each section of the
film is introduced as “the story of X”, all of them expanding from the starting
story based around three wanna-be-hoodlums whose mixed fates reference
everything from The Third Man to A Bout de Souffle. From this the film
organically expands, using Li'l Zé as the fulcrum who hinges every other story
around him towards disaster. It’s neatly cross-cut as well, starting the end
before rewinding through a neat transition shot into the past to explain how we
got where we are.
There seems to be no good deeds in the city. The most
likeable character, Benny, is himself a gangster (and Li'l Zé’s only friend and
restraining influence) who is fun-loving and cool while not adverse to theft
and murder when needed. Kingpin Knockout Ned starts out as a man of good
intentions, determined to clean up the town that has left him bereaved and
hurt, but becomes consumed by the dark impact of violence. All the time, many
of these gangsters are in love with their public image both the awe and fear
they inspire in those around them as the most powerful people in the
neighbourhood, and from their growing coverage in the press.
It’s a cycle that seems doomed to repeat itself, not least
through the film’s introduction of “The Runts” a group of trigger happy
pre-teen would-by gangsters, who roam through the streets waiting their chance
to turn small stick-ups into a criminal empire. They are no more than following
in the footsteps of Li'l Zé, shooting his gun and experiencing murder at their
age and now zeroing on owning the whole slum. It’s the dark ambition of
capitalism playing out on the streets.
The film works however as framing it around the jaunty,
relaxed narrative of Rocket gives it the feeling of a series of shaggy dog
stories and coming-of-age tales (and the film carefully mixes in among the
gangsters plenty of reminiscences from Rocket around his teenager upbringing,
his first love and his passion for photography). With someone as easy-going as
Rocket as our guide, the film never becomes overbearing or depressing but
instead as entertaining and engrossing. In a way it’s a shock to remember it
features as much killing (including of a child) and mayhem as it does, as well
as a world-weary nihilism too it that the odd person may escape the streets,
but the general world there will never change.
A staggeringly confident piece of film-making, City of God remains an exciting and
compelling piece of cinema.
No comments:
Post a comment