city of god

After recently revisiting Fernando Meirelles’ and Katia Lund’s 2003 film City of God (Cidade de Deus), I was struck once again by its utter brilliance. It is an interesting example of the importance of the artistic medium of film because it is not the plot that is so captivating, but rather the world that we are brought into using the visual and the auditory. It is a very rough and physical world of poverty and violence that is conveyed to the audience through mostly handheld DV with a traditional Brazilian soundtrack. The beginning of the movie takes place in a housing project called the “City of God,” establishing the background of the gang-members (“hoods”) with whom the film focuses. These scenes in the projects introduce us to the impoverished lifestyle that helps to form their characters. The scenes are noticeably orange and yellow reflecting the intense heat (literal and figurative) in which its citizens live. It is a physically hot environment that is only exasperated by the violence and desperate nature of its inhabitants. Rio de Janeiro, in which the majority of the rest of the film takes place is mostly shot with cool colors representing a transplant of the kids from the City of God into a new environment, a mixed environment of rich and poor, white and black, and common citizens along with the most wicked of society. Violence is prevalent throughout the film and while gruesome at times, one gets the impression that for the characters this is just life. You will be hard pressed to preach to people that grow up in this environment the sanctity of life. They are the forgotten of society, the desperate, and the downtrodden. The majority of the film captures rival street gangs seeking to gain control of the streets and of small-time drug dealing but perhaps the larger purpose is just survival.
City of God is a definitive example of the docudrama, where the unknown, amateur actors are so compelling that there are times where you are honestly astonished that these are actors. The movie is violent and there are scenes that many would consider sexually explicit, yet all of these factors help contribute a key reason for watching important films, specifically they transport us from our comfortable lives of suburbia into a brand new world of poverty, violence, and injustice. It is a dark and disturbing environment that cries out for something more than morality lessons and government handouts.
It is interesting that the characters live in a city called the City of God, where God is seemingly absent. Yet the paradox is that God isn’t absent. We see children made in the image of God forsake their relative innocence for belonging and acceptance by horrific gang initiations. Apparent is the need for God-shaped holes to be filled. We see the ugliness of sin reflected in the perversity of the characters lives contrasted with the beauty of Brazilian sunsets and panoramics. City of God brilliantly poses the paradox of great films with disturbing subject matter: beautiful hideousness. The ugliness of humanity’s sin shot along with and through the beauty reflective of God’s common grace, whether through locations or the director’s aesthetic vision. Films like City of God wake us up to the fact that we are not ok and the rest of the world is not ok. Far too many Christians live their lives (and by default view art) as if people have dirty hearts that just need sanitization. Films like City of God should remind us instead that we have dead hearts in need of transplants.