City of God - Cidade de Deus (2002)
Directed by Kátia Lund & Fernando Meirelles

City of God flies through its rapid-fire narrative like a bullet- an impressive feat given how emotionally “heavy” it is. Perhaps this is because the story is based on the young life of one of the Brazil’s greatest photojournalists (Wilson Rodriguez), or that the favela it depicts is as far from fiction as the “City of God” is from being “godly.” The graphically honest depictions of poverty and filth, rampant drug use, gun violence and children killing other children bring this movie closest to Octavio Paz’s depictions of the city as a “dungheap.” However, it also depicts the chaos of the city as literal fertilizer for artistic expression, as evidenced by the protagonists rise as a photojournalist.

In depicting the “rise” of the City of God from a virtual refugee camp for rural migrants to a drug-based economy with its own system of leadership and “order,” the movie illustrates urban identity as a construct of base human survival and our inert need to “escape.” Like the protagonists of Salaam Bombay!, the characters of City of God define their lives according to the methods of escape prescribed by the “laws” of the favella: drugs, guns, power and/ or death.

In one scene, a young boy defines his manhood according to his penchant to “smoking, snorting and killing.” The last twenty minutes depicts both gangs recruiting soldiers from the ranks of the pre-pubescent – all of whom define their “selves” by their guns’ touted kills.

It is a bleak reality, indeed. But one that can be escaped by the rare “eye” who can “see” the treasure in the gutter. This is where young “Rocket” ultimately triumphs : in finding beauty in the dungheap.