City of God is a Brazilian film directed by Fernando Mereilles and Katia Lund. Although the film actually takes place in the real world, the world portrayed is so divorced from modern American life, and its style is so otherworldly, that it’s shocking to watch and become educated on the crime, violence and poverty that is still faced in second world slums and across the third world.
The plot of the film revolves around following the lives of two characters, Rocket and Li’l Dice, from their childhood, under authority of the previous generation, until the generation following them takes the reigns of power in Rio de Janeiro. It’s a storytelling method that prioritizes powerful and compelling characters with the explicit purpose of illuminating the world of Rio de Janeiro, a place where that generational spread occurs in only twenty years, violence dictates success, and success represents a spiraling downward of the city.
In this world, poverty is implicit. The people have only a few viable career options: work low level jobs for low wages, farm for self-sustenance, or join with a gang through which all economic and military power in the city is derived.
Origins
The growth of Rio de Janeiro around its suburb, Cidade de Deus, is primarily responsible for the crime there. In the 60s, the youth of the suburb would hijack passing by supply trucks in order to secure supplies for the otherwise forgotten town. This Robin Hood type criminality became bolder, eventually exporting itself from City of God into greater Rio de Janeiro, as the hoodlums would move into the city to hold up brothels and other businesses. The anger and pain of being poor and physically mistreated by older hoods leads the main antagonist, Li’l Dice, to murder all the hostages following a robbery, framing the older hoods.
Li’l Dice, representing all the most negative qualities that result from mistreatment, lack of education, poor environment, lack of support structure and parenting and physical repulsiveness, sees only two motivations in life: money and power. As Rio de Janeiro expands and its need for thievery to survive dissipates, the criminal lifestyle stays intact and expands along with the city due to the criminal culture and way of life that’s already been established. Li’l Dice overthrows the drug trade in the city, and takes a new name: Li’l Ze.
Eventually, Li’l Ze is ousted by a group they call the ‘runts’, who represent the upcoming generation in the city. Taking control at an extraordinarily young age, just as Li’l Ze did, they show how systemic and brutal the city-life has become by their time – while Li’l Dice escalated the violence and brutality from Robin Hood themed supply hold-ups, to organized crime with no pretense of altruism, the runts have grown up in Li’l Ze’s Rio — they believe that violence is systemic in the city and talk openly, in socially acceptable ways, of committing the kinds of violence Li’l Ze maniacally pushed into the city. His mania became normal, and the next generation, it’s suggested, is poised to escalate further.
Borders, Exclusions
Race and cultural identity play into City of God a great deal. The white police suppress the slums and supply the gangs with guns in order to make a profit on their violence. The city is split into two distinct territories: Carrot’s, and Li’l Ze’s. Their drug based control of the city is so tight that the gang sets up checkpoints along their arbitrary territorial border; everyone, gang affiliated or not, is checked.
The people of nearby San Paolo are not involved; cameras and journalists are not allowed into the City of God; the city develops a reputation as a place for locals only.
Shared Values & Consequences
There are, perhaps, two important sets of shared values presented in the movie. One, belonging to the citizens of Rio de Janeiro, is that working to survive is difficult, but noble, and that violence and crime is eating their city. This ideology is often represented by older characters in the film, parental figures, and most notably by the main protagonist, Rocket. This group understands that they will work hard, make little money, and be tested by the city on a regular basis.
The other, the hoods, exists as a grotesque operational code: insubordination results in death and committing unsanctioned crimes in Li’l Ze’s territory results in death or mutilation. A group of six-ten year olds holds up a market. Li’l Ze shoots the toes off of one child and forces another to kill a third. This behavior is routine.
Cultures and Customs
The cultural groups present in the city are: disco-kids, gangsters, drug addicts, workers, and religious people. Among them there is a unifying, heroic figure, named Benny, who is assassinated by a disgruntled thug who was aiming for Li’l Ze.
Economies of Value
The impoverished nature of the city is the most stark element of the film. Rocket, the main character, has a life goal to become a photographer; instead of being able to achieve that dream by prescribed path such as attending a university and being folded into career, Rocket makes use of the cheap, kodak-style camera he’s able to get his hands on. He works as a delivery boy for a paper, and not until becoming 20 years old, coinciding with Benny’s death, is he able to get a camera. Even then, he becomes employed as a photographer only because of the pain and disillusionment he has access to photographing as a local from the City of God. Even Rocket, the most altruistic and peace-loving character in the film, works for the violence.
Property, as a whole, is bought and sold through intimidation and murder. Rarely do legitimate business transactions occur in the world of the film; when it does, it is a goods-trade transaction, rather than a monetary one.
Differences Between City of God and the ‘Real’ World
In Rio de Janeiro, people can’t buy what they want. They can’t have the careers that they want. Education is a scarce and typically unwanted resource. Electricity is not guaranteed; even nice clothes have to be traded for, or otherwise acquired from outside the city. Ethics are not taught except through the church, which is voluntary. There is no support structure to aid the children affected by violence and crime, so the problems exist as an expansionary cycle. Evil, tyrants win until they’re overthrown by other tyrants while all heroes are killed after a painful, long and futile fight. The largest industry is illegal narcotics trade. Gangs outgun the police and run both the city’s crime and its services; order exists only insofar as the gangs allow it to, and dismantling the drug trade means allowing anarchy into the city. There is no Amazon.com, and there are no Hawaiian vacations; in the City of God, there is only struggle.
