City of God
There’s a gang of very young 6–7-year-old kids called the runts who are creating havoc in the neighbourhood. Notorious as they are, you tend to dislike this bunch. In one of the most gut-wrenching and culture-defining scenes from the movie, Li’l Zé, the reigning don of the ghetto who feels disrespected by these kids, catches a couple of them and presents the tiny little kids with a choice.
“Where should I shoot you? In the hand or the foot?”
The kids are visibly shaken. Crying in fear. The camera tilts over their little body: a small hand, a small leg. Just out of diapers, they have to make a choice to be shot in their hand or leg. Just like us in the school offering our palms to be hit by the ruling scale, these kids provide their palms to be shot by a bullet. The kids you have disliked so far as an audience now beg for your sympathy. You are suddenly humbled by your irritation.
Sometimes, I feel like I have seen all the classics. All those movies that had the power to make me fall in love with films. But then, yesterday, I had a pleasant epiphany. I watched City of God for the first time.
This is a story with the city being a central character — like Tokyo was in Lost in Translation, Mumbai was in Wake up Sid — City of God engulfs these stories weaved into it as we follow the main characters transitioning from boyhood to manhood. But these are no ordinary boys growing up in a neighbourhood.
These are boys amid the growth of organized crime in the Cidade de Deus suburb of Rio de Janeiro between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1980s, with the film’s closure depicting the war between the drug dealer Li’l Zé and vigilante-turned-criminal Knockout Ned. The tagline reads, “If you run, the beast catches you; if you stay, the beast eats you.”
Life is not linear, after all. It is full of emotional ups and downs that will change you as a person constantly. This movie manages to inflict a change on you scene after scene in the span of a couple of hours. It is raw, thrilling, funny in parts and an out an out classic that will never be forgotten.
A big thank you to this crew for bringing a masterpiece to life. It is available on Amazon Prime. Watch it!
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed it, clap! Also, I would love to hear about your experience of watching this film. You can get in touch with me here.
Enjoy!
