"The City of God"
At first glance, one would expect a movie titled "City of God" to show how poverty and marginalization would make criminals of frustrated people. Instead we see how, in an atmosphere of unsupervised chaos, a single charismatic psychopath can hold sway over an entire population with the force of his sick personality. Set on the mean streets of a Rio de Janeiro slum (in the 'Cidade de Deus' housing project), "City of God" is a story about two boys who grow up in differing paths. One, Buscape (Rodrigues), becomes a photographer; the other becomes a drug dealer. The film follows their paths through a series of short stories, as we learn about the violent, often short lives of those wrapped up in the dangerous world of drugs and crime on Brazil's cruelest area.Based on a true story, this movie spans two decades, from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. It depicts an account of the brutal teenage gangs that battle for control of the drug trade in the Rio de Janeiro slums. It is narrated through the eyes of Buscape, in his arid housing project 15 miles outside of Rio De Janeiro, beginning with him as a child looking up to the local hoods as they rob delivery trucks, and ending with him photographing them for the local newspaper as the
Yet there is little motivation for many of the young people to study hard, to go to school, even to learn how to write. "This is where the politicians dump their garbage", he says. One of the film's most intriguing aspects is that it generates compassion for the characters who do not feel it for themselves. It represents the combined failures of local government, law and order, and perhaps the human race. The element of realism can make the movie a flashpoint for controversy. This movie is an indication that what drives kids into the gangs is just partly for the money because many are in low-level positions waiting years to rise in the "corporation. Although Buscape is a poor black kid, who is too frail and scared to become an outlaw, he is however smart to be content with an underpaid job. Life and death among the gang members boils down to who has the most power, either by the use of guns or connections to drug suppliers. The viewer seems to be more affected by some of the brutality than the people actually suffering the losses. Some are homeless and all seem to be without parental guidance. This is not the Rio that tourism officials want to show the world. He discovers that he can see the reality of his violent world with a different eye: the eye of an artist. The liberation of the situation is partly the point of the movie, as Buscape narrates in flashback; the implication is that the violence of his surroundings did not claim him. One can group them on an imagined most wanted list of places that are off limits, streets and sidewalks where we think getting killed might be as likely as tripping over the curb. There is little evidence in the City of God of the tarpaper shacks you find all over the Third World (including some just over the border from the San Diego Yacht Club in Tijuana, Mexico).
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Acceptance Essays
