City of God (Cidade de Deus) (2002)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Featurette-Documentary: News From A Personal War (56:41)
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	124:24
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (42:44)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Fernando Meirelles
Studio Distributor	Walt Disney Studios Home Ent.	Starring	Matheus Nachtergaele Alexandre Rodrigues Leandro Firmino Da Hora Jonathan Haagensen Phellipe Haagensen Douglas Silva Daniel Zettel Seu Jorge
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	?	Music	Antonio Pinto Ed Cortes

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	Portuguese Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, briefly but interestingly so during credits

    When we think of Rio de Janeiro, the first things that tend to pop into mind are the beaches of Copacabana, Sugarloaf and its world famous statue of Jesus and the sexual orgy that is Carnival. Unfortunately, there is another side to Rio de Janeiro that even the Brazilian government tries to forget about. It is perhaps the most notorious slum in the world and it goes by the name of the City Of God.

    In order to present the desired image of the Copacabana and everything else to the world, in order to generate and sustain a very viable and valuable tourist industry, a whole heap of problems have had to be swept under the proverbial carpet. That clean, crime free image came at a very substantial cost: the authorities simply moved all those poor and homeless people who would otherwise clutter up the pristine image of Rio de Janeiro into the City Of God. The government then promptly decided that that was all that needed to be done and left the residents to their own devices. With nothing in the way of even rudimentary amenities like proper roads and street lighting, they must have been woefully naive to believe that this situation was not a powder keg waiting to explode. And it has. Abject poverty amongst tens of thousands of people crammed into hovels that are barely more than cages has a way of doing that. Crime became a necessity for survival, and that in itself created an atmosphere where survival was always a difficult thing. The City Of God became an area ruled by crime, where the criminals became the government in many ways and where life was and is a very tenuous thing that can be snuffed out in the blink of an eye - courtesy of young children barely out of nappies toting guns that would not look out of place in the military arsenals of the superpowers.

    Welcome to Hell.

    City Of God is ostensibly the story of one young man's determination to avoid the gang life, and to escape the slum by becoming a professional photographer. However, it is a story much, much more than just that and in its way is perhaps one of the greatest indictments of a government that has consistently failed, at many levels, to deal with the burgeoning problems of a society with a wealth divide as big as the Andes Mountains. The story is told by its central character Buscapé a.k.a. Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues) through a series of related and cumulative flashbacks, starting at the beginning of the climax of the film. Rocket finds himself between a rock and a hard place - on one side an armed-to-the-hilt gang led by L'il Ze Pequeno (Leandro Firmino da Hora), and on the other armed police. The no man's land he occupies is certain death, but as he says, to understand his story, we have to go back to the beginning. Immediately we know that this is a film of rare distinction. Up to this point we have had an innocuous enough chase of an escaped chook by the gang (innocuous only if you ignore the copious weaponry, more than a small army can pack), filmed in a very fluid, hectic, vibrant way. The return to the beginning of the story sees the whole look of the film change as the hectic, vibrancy of the current slum gives way to a dusty, sunny housing development of the 1960's. Give you the tip here - this is one visually superb film and a thoroughly engrossing, absorbing experience that is almost guaranteed to grab you for the full two hours.

    The beginning of the story sees us looking at The Tender Trio, a group of three petty criminals whose minor exploits in the ghetto have made them heroes to the youngsters - even though they are basically incompetent dipsticks who will always be nothing more than petty. Rocket's elder brother Goose is one of The Tender Trio, hence the recollection beginning here. The little brother of another of the gang is L'il Dice, who has the real criminal mind so lacking amongst the three members of the Trio; he plans out a spectacular raid for them on a local motel. The Tender Trio has a whale of a time checking out the copulating couples (or better) before relieving them of their money and valuables, along with the money from the motel itself. However, when the police arrive they are confronted with one of the biggest blood baths ever seen, and the hunt is on for the Trio. They are forced to go on the run and cease to be the idols of the ghetto - and each slowly finds justice does win in the end. We of course see the truth, that one individual is responsible for the bloodbath, but that never got in the way of police brutality and the ignorance of basic jurisprudence.

    Jump forward a decade and L'il Dice has become L'il Ze and wants to be the boss of the ghetto. That would satisfy his thirst for power, although money and drugs are also on the agenda somewhere. Through sheer firepower and force of will, he achieves his aim although one rival does remain - Carrot (Matheus Nachtergaele), who becomes the focal point of the war that is about to erupt in the City. Through power comes money and paranoia, but despite the problems L'il Ze does have some trusted friends, like the charismatic Benny (Phellipe Haagensen). Benny is well liked by everyone, and who has a degree of rational compassion despite the often violent life that goes on around him. He is the person who keeps L'il Ze in check. However, when Benny meets Angelica (Alice Braga), he finds a girl who can drag him out of this world. She does that, but events go somewhat awry at his farewell bash in the City. Those events push L'il Ze over the edge and war with Carrot's gang is almost certain.

    All the time, Rocket is surviving the events going on around him but as a nice guy he knows that he is not going anywhere. However, when his few attempts at crime are pitifully lamentable, he realises that he has to survive by pursuing a different route. His ability to avoid offending anyone ensures his survival and presents him with his opportunity to escape the ghetto. His interest in photography is well known and he acts as "official photographer" for his gang of friends, effectively documenting the way they live. After some convoluted events that involved Knockout Ned (Seu Jorge) resulted in L'il Ze not getting any press space, L'il Ze asks Rocket to take some photographs of him and his gang. Rocket does so and uses his friendship with a fellow City dweller who works in the photo lab of one of the biggest newspapers in Rio to get the film developed. The film is developed but the photographs are inadvertently used by the newspaper, including one on the front page. When Rocket finds out he goes ballistic as he fears that L'il Ze will kill him. He fails to understand that the fame is precisely what the crime boss wants, and rather than being killed the photos lead to him getting laid (part of the story funnily enough), getting the opportunity to be in the right place and the wrong time and eventually an internship at the newspaper.

    Based in part on the life of Wilson Rodriguez (a famed Brazilian photographer), just where do you begin with analysing this superb film? Well, perhaps the obvious place is debutante director Fernando Meirelles. Variously described as a documentary director and a director of television commercials, what he did to capture the pulsating, intoxicating, exotic and fearful life of the City has resulted in one of the most visually stunning efforts seen on film. There is little here that accords with "traditional" film making, and with just about every technique you can think of employed, wherever he pointed a camera he was not shooting blanks. A lot of hand-held camera work gives the film its hectic, vibrant base, but its the imaginative use of focus and non-focus, the use of split screen, of colour, time lapse and everything else that marks this as a film of great distinction. He is unafraid to use brilliant techniques like sudden new flashbacks just as a previous flashback intersects with the appearance of a new character or scenario. The initial flashback itself finally segues through a bunch of other flashbacks back into the "present" situation in such a way that, despite it sounding chaotic, simply works like I have rarely seen before. The editing of what Fernando Meirelles captured on film is simply wonderful and despite the odd "off" moment here and there, this is a terrifically tight film that just does not lag, despite the potential for doing so in this flashback narrative style. Even the end credits are imaginative, with the individual actor's credits also including pictures of the real-life character they were based upon.

    The whole film reeks of authenticity and so it should - many of the actors used here are actually residents of the City. The novel upon which the film was based is by Paulo Lins, himself a former resident of the City. You just have to experience films like this in order to understand that reality is not created by flashy, expensive effects or by hugely salaried actors reading lines written by someone stuck in a back office of one of the major studios. This is more real than any film you could just about care to name, simply because at no time does it veer from its roots and simply never gives an indication that it is anything but a documentary filmed on location. The film does not proclaim to be anything but what it is - a gritty, realistic portrayal of one of the great shames of Brazil. Comparisons have been made with American films like Goodfellas and Gangs Of New York. I cannot attest to the latter, but this surpasses Goodfellas in just about every way.

    Brutal, violent, funny, tragic, provocative, disturbing: this film just about covers the whole gamut of life - as it should and must. Quite simply it is a superb piece of passionate film making that would rank amongst the very finest of films I have seen in recent times. I have rarely if ever seen a film from Brazil, but if you miss City Of God, you really have missed out on something very special indeed.

Video

    With such a visually engaging style adopted by the director in making the film, it is very important that the transfer does that style the justice it deserves. This one does in just about every respect. Indeed, so good is it that my note book is almost totally devoid of any notations made during the viewing of the DVD. This is a really superb transfer that very, very, very nearly is of reference-quality - and certainly good enough for five star recognition. The only thing denying it reference quality is perhaps the slight colouration in the credits at the end of the film.

    The film is presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and it is 16x9 enhanced.

    What needs to be said here? Whatever ails the image is inherent in the source material as it is exactly what the director wanted us to see. So those odd focus lapses are meant to be there, the rape scene is shot in such a way as to obscure detail rather than emphasise it, and the narrowness of some of the shadow detail is intended to emphasise the subject matter. These and many more examples just serve to illustrate how much effort went into the look of the film and it is all there in its full, gorgeous detail in this transfer. Wonderful stuff across the entire two hours. grain is not an issue, low level noise is not an issue and clarity is wonderful. This ranks very highly amongst the near 700 reviews I have done for this site.

    Obviously there has to have been some colour processing of the film in order to get some of the images exactly as they appear (unless of course the director was staggeringly lucky with some of his shots), but that only serves to emphasise the amazing vibrancy of the colours on offer. If you could quibble about the amazing palette of colours here, you would be on your own I suspect. This conveys everything you need to see about the City and its inhabitants and I really could not have imagined a better look than this. Black levels are absolutely perfect and skin tones are amazingly realistic - highlighting the very diverse nature of the Brazilian population in this regard. Saturation is superb, absolutely spot on throughout and never is there any issue with over or under saturation. You can forget colour bleed too.

    There are no MPEG artefacts in the transfer as far as I can see, with any resolution issues being as the director intended. There was nothing in the way of noticeable problems with film-to-video artefacts in the transfer, although I would suppose that there had to be some very minor instances somewhere that I might well have missed. If I did they really could not have amounted to anything. There was not a single problem with film artefacts in the transfer as far as I could see.

    This is an RSDL formatted DVD, with the layer change coming at 42:44. Whilst noticeable, it is well placed and barely disrupts the film at all.

    There are two subtitle options on the DVD, being English and English for the Hearing Impaired efforts. I cannot attest to the accuracy of the translations as my Portuguese is very limited, but they seemed to convey the general tone of the film well enough.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There is just the one soundtrack on the DVD. I don't know but that sounds rather dismissive of the excellent Portuguese Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack that blesses this DVD. While many will bemoan the fact that there is not an English dubbed soundtrack available as an option, I am not one of them. This original soundtrack, even for non-Portuguese speakers like myself, conveys so much emotion at times that you don't need to understand the language to understand the film.

    The dialogue comes up very well in the transfer and there are no problems understanding what is being said (providing of course you understand Portuguese). There did not appear to be any issues with audio sync in the transfer.

    The original music score comes from Antonio Pinto and Ed Cortes. Whilst dimly aware of the music going on in the film, to be honest I was so engrossed with the film that I gave no specific attention to the score. In reality, that is really the way it should be. As much as music is a part of Brazilian life, it is the background beat to which everything is done and that is exactly the way the music works in the film. As such, it is a great use of the music and it serves the film very well indeed. Had I have really noticed the music, then I would have to have said that the music did not do its job this time.

    The opening of the film is silent before we get the sound of a knife being sharpened on a stone, in preparation for the slitting of the chicken's throat. The fact that it grates like hell, just as if someone was running their fingernails down a blackboard, indicates how good the sound in the film is. It is certainly not a perfect soundtrack, but there really is nothing much to complain about at all. Just once or twice I really wished for a bit more presence in the sound, but that would be the extent of my concerns. The gun fire uses the surround sound format well, with plenty of thump when objects are hit and plenty of separation of the sound. The party music in particular is well handled in the surround channels and overall this is an excellent soundtrack only modestly let down by the fact that the low frequency channel was a little restrained in order not to drown out the dialogue in what is really a dialogue driven film, despite all the action.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    This is a rental release, so we get just one extra on the DVD. Mind you, it is a very, very, very good extra!

Menu

    Rather nicely presented if lacking anything in the way of audio and animation enhancement.

Documentary - News From A Personal War (56:41)

    This is a documentary filmed during 1997 and 1998 taking a personal look at the drug problem in the favellas (slums) from the perspectives of the policeman on the job, the Chief of Police for Rio de Janeiro, the drug dealers, their soldiers and the residents. What this immediately does is confirm that City Of God has got it just about absolutely right. What it also tells you is that if you thought the solution to the problems of drugs in the favellas was a simple one to deal with, think again. We can have no understanding of how the concept of drug dealing can be a positive thing in a favella, until you listen to what the people living there say. We can have no conception of how to overcome the problem when you hear in their own words the way that the drug dealers and their lackeys see their role in that society. I mean this is about as unbelievable as it comes, yet it is all true and in their own words. There are also some truly thought provoking opinions put on record here, not the least of which is the view of the Chief of Police that people really don't want an honest police force - and proceeds to justify that point of view validly. How about the view that if the United States has the right to attack the drug trade at its roots in the drug fields of Colombia and Peru, why doesn't Brazil have the right to close the gun manufacturers like Colt in the United States, since gun smuggling and the drug trade are totally interconnected? Get rid of the guns and there might just be hope for doing something positive about the violence and trade in the favellas. An interesting point again by the Chief of Police. Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 that is not 16x9 enhanced, and with a good Portuguese Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack, the transfer suffers a little from the source material and some film-to-video artefacting (aliasing and moiré mostly). The English subtitles are not selectable and are a little intrusive at times. One of the most interesting and thought provoking (as well as mind boggling) extras that I have ever experienced on DVD.

    Right, things here are a little complicated. Remember that the Region 4 release is a rental-only release, not available to purchase until March, 2004 apparently.

    The Region 1 version is not slated for release until December, 2003 (with various dates being quoted depending upon which site you check out). I have not yet been able to track down any definite information on what will be on that DVD, nor any preview reviews. Region 2 (at least the UK part thereof) has had this release on sale for about a month now and by all accounts it is the same version we have available for rent in Region 4 in every way. Region 2 (Germany) appears to be getting a slightly different version with German dubbed soundtracks in Dolby Digital 5.1 and dts 5.1 sound. Unfortunately my German is not good enough to comment upon what extras are on the DVD, which appears due for release on 20th November, but with German subtitles only would be of limited use to English speakers anyone.

    There is a Region 3 release available which features no extras but does come with a dts 5.1 (768 Kb/s) soundtrack in addition to the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. By the account I found, it seems the dts soundtrack is slightly better than the Dolby Digital, most notably due to better detail and presence. However, the video on the Region 3, whilst still very good apparently, is not quite as good as the near-reference quality Region 2 (UK) version. The Region 3 DVD is however available for under $20 delivered from a well known HK based site.

    At this time, the best release is the Region 2 (UK) - the same transfer we have here but available for purchase now. If you cannot wait for the Region 4 release to become available for purchase, I would strongly recommend the Region 2 version (around $30 delivered from that HK based site at the moment). If you are happy to rent, then do so and buy this Region 4 release when it comes available in March, 2004.

    UPDATE - if you want a reasonably comprehensive look at some of the various releases available around the world then check out DVD Compare.

    City Of God (Cidade De Deus) is a superb film in just about every way. Visually in a class of its own, this is one of the very best films you will see on DVD this year. With a superb extra, as a rental this is an absolute must-see. Yes, it is disturbing and yes, some might find the violence and brutality a little too much, but you simply cannot ignore the importance of this film in revealing a very violent underbelly to that clean image of Rio de Janeiro in the tourist brochures.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall