City of God (DVD)

If you really care about your cinema, you'll hopefully have noticed that Latin America has produced some of the most exciting films of recent years. Buoyed, perhaps, by the success of Roberto Rodrigues, Mexico has given us Amores Perros and Y Tu Mama Tambien. The Mamet-style heist movie, Nine Queens, is Argentinian. And the vast unruly melting pot of Brazil gave us Fernando Meirelles's City of God - Cidade de Deus. (In Brazilian, with subtitles as required.) As a side-note, HMV's current sale, with many of the above for £9-£10, is umissable. Based on a novel by Paulo Lins, itself based on actual events in the increasingly ...  Read the complete review

The film, directed by Fernando Meirelles, tells the story of life in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, in an area known as the Cidade De Deus, the City of God. The story is told from the narration of the young photographer, Rocket. The different scenarios of life that make up the wider-story are presented in Pulp Fiction style chapters, complete with on-screen titles for each different story component. The story covers all the facets of the life, charting the growth of several key members of the gangs from childhood through to young adulthood, with their transformation from young hoodlums to local drugs barons. The final parts of the story focus on the battle within the ...  Read the complete review

City of God. I'd like to begin by thanking whoever wrote a review of this film in 'Leeds Student' - the University's rag. I think they gave it a 9/10, and that stuck in my head as a film that I'd like to see. It just so happened that 'The Ring' had sold out, so my girlfriend and I went to see this mighty film instead. I will certainly watch out for both when they arrive on VHS rental. Anyway, the film in hand is a Brazilian film with subtitles, which may make a great deal of people, many who would love this film, somewhat wary. To dispel any fears, the narrative and thus subtitles, are comprehendible and relatively easy to ...  Read the complete review

In the opening sequence of 'City of God', (Cidade de Deus), the dark screen and accompanying score are occasionally punctuated by a shot of a knife being sharpened on a stone - the noise of which is enough to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and a sense of foreboding grow. When you consider the brutal violence and drug trafficking shown in this film, you might well think that this stomach sickening sound starts the film as it means to go on. The foreboding is merited, but this Brazilian film never once glamorises the events depicted, whilst somehow managing to be effortlessly slick and stylish. The knife being sharpened is to ...  Read the complete review

--The Film Itself-- Brazil is a country in which the reality is that every year 20 000 people die of violent crime. Bearing this in mind, Fernando Meirelles 'City of God' is a film with intense social realism in which the 'true' story if you will of life in Brazil's most notorious favela (slum) is presented. The main characters for this film are those of the character who provides the omniscient voiceover narrative role of Rocket, played by Alexandre Rodrigues, and that of L'il Dice (Douglas Silva) who later in the film becomes L'il Ze (Leandro Firmino) as he gets older. In the favela, people often have to resort to crime in the form of violence and ...  Read the complete review