Film Analysis Of City Of God

Analysis of: City of God

The movie “City of God” that was directed by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund and released in 2002 is a film of despair, offering a one dimensional view of urban culture, in Brazil where social divisions appear too wide to-bridge, and where millions are too brutalized by violence and poverty to contribute to any process of change.

It is a story about two kids, Rocket and Lil Ze, growing up in the City Of God favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Lil Ze, a child who wanted to prove himself, became a merciless drug lord, who killed raped, robbed, and threatened in order to gain power. The other kid, is Rocket, witnessed the violence going on in the neighborhood around him and became a photographer. The narrative essentially revolves around how Rocket grows up in the hostile environment of his slum and how he finally manages to break away from the volatile conditions to a more organized one in the form of a professional photographer.
This film demonstrated two paths people growing up in this environment could take and showed the

The favelas in Brazil are crowded; in the film you really see how the people in these neighbourhood’s live. For example, they are shown to be “ scruffy, dirty ,scampering around on the dusty play-fields and squalid alleys, their body language expressing the weightlessness of their thin bones and scrawing chests, their clothes are ragged and old; some kids are seen running around without shoes on through the streets, pushing aside people and animals. The houses seem to have layers of dirt on them and dust from the constant commotion pervades the air. The film authentically portrays the squalor people actually live in. In one scene you see a boy riding his bike and in the background there are burnt cars and trash piled around