Kendal Gast
ENGL 355
City of God
That title
is for a movie, not a book. It’s a
Brazilian film directed by Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund. Meirelles also directed Rio, I Love You and The
Constant Gardener. I watched it for
my World Food Issues class and wrote a report on it. For some reason, we needed three scholarly
references for a movie report. As annoying as the requirement was, I
stumbled upon unknown background on the film.
Rocket is
the main character that lives in the City of God, the setting for the film and
based on the real Rio de Janeiro favela,
or shantytown. The directors hired true
residents of the City of God, young boys with no acting experience and little
school exposure. In the opening scene
Rocket is in the wrong place at the right time, literally caught in the middle
of standoff between the local gang and the police. Before anything happens, Rocket’s voice
begins narrating and we are taken back to when he was a boy and the City of God
wasn’t quite such a jungle.
The rest of
the movie explains how Rocket ended up in that moment trapped between the two
groups. Gang violence in the favelas of
Rio is a common occurrence. Often, gang
leaders act as a local government that “owns” the favela and the resources it
holds. This is partly due to Rio’s
refusal to recognize the City of God and others like it as a real suburb. If it were a real suburb, the City of God
would have a more comprehensive police force, elected officials, and infrastructure. Gangs are perpetuated in the favelas partly
due to corrupt police. The residents of
the favela, hating the police and the actions they take against citizens, then
have little choice but to accept the gang’s “protection”. The police do little to help the situation
because gangs are typically involved in drug trafficking and can afford to pay
off the police when there is violence or if a member is arrested.
In 2016, it
isn’t uncommon for gangs to operate more effectively out of jail. Leaders who go to jail bribe guards and
acquire cellphones to communicate outside the walls. This wouldn’t be any different from outside
confinement except that enemies of the gang cannot get into jail very
easily. So long as the leader is
incarcerated, they are free to believe that no one will try to kill them.
Within the
past three years, the city government in Rio has enacted new ordinances that
basically outlaw favelas. It is primarily
because of this summer’s Olympic games.
Several favelas have been destroyed to make way for new urban
infrastructure and development. One
neighborhood was destroyed to make room for an aerial tramway. In response, favela populations are organizing
and gaining support from aide organizations and the international media.
Olympics
and gang dynamics aside, this was a very raw film. Lil Zé, the primary antagonist in the movie, kills
Rocket’s older brother when he was only eight years old. They were talking outside of town and he
simply pumped a few bullets in him without flinching. And before, in an earlier sequence, Zé kills
several people staying in a hotel while laughing and enjoying himself – still
less than 10 years old. But there were
several other cold-blooded killings in the movie, mostly done by kids younger
than me. City of God was a great movie with high replay value, but I wasn’t
sure what it wanted me to feel at the end.
The movie proved no one is safe from violence or any type of sudden
death – neither good or bad people can escape random bullets to the head. Sometimes the choices character’s made
influenced their ends, other times shit happened. And I don’t think the ending leaves you with
an “Always be prepared” maxim. I think
it’s more like “Have courage, there is an end”.
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