The Greatest Films 2000-2009, #6: Cidade de Deus (City of God) (2002)

Directed by Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund; written by Bráulio Mantovani, based on a novel by Paulo Lins; cinematography by César Charlone
130 mins.; 1.85:1; colour; language: Portugese
At Wikipedia, IMDb (8.8), Metacritic (79)

Starting in the mid-1990s, world cinema has seen a series of films that achieve a thoroughly pop feel by employing techniques quite possibly inspired by music videos: A high frequency of cuts, hyperrealsitic colouring, quick camera movements and extensive, expressive use of pop music, to name but the most obvious elements. This school of directing has produced excellent pictures such as Requiem for a Dream, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Romeo+Juliet, but the textbook specimen - in the sense of most clearly exemplifying the style we're talking about - must be City of God.

Much in line with another trend in recent years, City of God is episodic, telling a number of related anecdotes. But this film, unlike Magnolia or Amores Perros, has a narrator as its center of gravity, our hero Buscapé, who lives in Rio de Janeiro's government-constructed slums the film's title refers to, where crime isn't a disruption of the normal course of life, but rather the normal course of life itself. Though that's where he lives, Buscapé himself quite clearly isn't cut out for crime, which makes him an insider-outsider and hence the ideal narrator for the film. And so we learn about drugs, revenge and the ever-prevailing need for honour and respect that fuels so much violence. While our hero finds - modest - success in the face of adversity, the narrative makes it quite clear that there is no development for the better in the City of God - nor for the worse, for that matter, things will just stay as fucked up as they have always been.

If that sounds like depressing viewing, it's not. The movie has been compared to Scorsese's Gangs of New York for the subject matter and Goodfellas for style, but it is more akin to the film that had a large hand in starting the wave of pop looking films, Danny Boyle's Trainspotting. As Trainspotting makes great entertainment out of heroin addiction, City of God allows you a look at the grimness of Brazilian slum life while keeping it a lot of fun. It's verging on the immoral, really.