City Of God

City of God

In the latter half of 2002 a movie was released that was nominated for four Oscars, won acclaim from critics worldwide, and ended up winning 21 various awards from some of the most prestigious organizations in the film community. (www.imdb.com) City of God had such an impact that even the president of Brazil "reviewed and praised City of God as a needful call for change," (Ebert) due to its frighteningly real parallels with everyday life in Rio's slums, known as "favelas." (Pierce)

City of God, directed by Fernando Meirelles and Kбtia Lund, (www.imdb.com) displays certain themes throughout its progression that contribute to the films emotional appeal. One of these important themes in City of God is that of innocence and the obviously apparent lack of it in the slums of Rio. During the first scene in the movie, the main character is simple strolling through the city with his friend, and then all of a sudden he's caught in the middle of the police and the gang, showing the precarious balance between life and death that face the residents of the slums. At another point in the movie, a woman rejects Lil Zй when he asks her to dance, because she tells him that she is here with someone already. A minute later, Lil Zй sees the woman again, this time dancing with her date, "Knockout Ned", and he feels compelled to humiliate the man by making him strip in front of everyone at gunpoint while he laughs in the mans face. Shortly after this incident occurs, Knockout Ned and his date are walking down the street when Lil Zй and his cronies walk up behind the two of them, and restrain Ned while they rape the woman. In a scene that critic Octavio Roca calls "the emotional climax of the film," a young boy is given the option of being shot in the hand or the foot, because Lil Zй feels that the boy needs to know whose turf he is on. The boy, who it is noted has just been shooting people, breaks into sobs and brings the audience back in a hard way to the fact that even though the acts of violence that these people commit are terrifying, they are still just kids. (Roca)

Another theme in the film is the choices that the different characters make in terms of how they live their life. Each main character has their own story, and for the most part each one revolves around the lifestyle that the character chose as a young child. Rocket, the main character in the movie, chooses to not follow in the footsteps of his older brother and become a hoodlum, where "crime appears to be the only option in the moral and economic wasteland of the Brazilian favelas." (Pierce) Instead, he desires to become a photographer after finding a camera. Although this does not necessarily keep him safe, he is able to retain the friendship of both of the main gangs, even as he gets older, because of the publicity that he gives the gangs through his pictures. Due to this, he is never anyone's target, but at the same time he is not just some innocent bystander that got in the way, whose life is meaningless to the hoodlums.

Lil Zй, originally named Lil Dice, also chooses his lifestyle at an early age and for the most part does not even consider a change. He was already a dangerous hoodlum even when he was young, and grew up to be the most powerful gangster in the city. Even when he was fairly wealthy and well-known, he still was not satisfied. In order to fix this, he forcefully took over control of the largest drug operation in the city, which made him enough money for whatever he desired, and also undisputedly made him the most powerful