OVP: City of God (2003)

Film: City of God (2003)
Stars: Alexandre Rodrigues, Luis Otavio, Leandro Fimino da Hora, Douglas Silva, Phellipe Haagensen, Matheus Nachtergaele, Seu Jorge, Alice Braga
Director: Fernando Meirelles
Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Director, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

On Oscar nominations morning, there are always surprises.  Usually there's at least one "hmm-didn't expect that" acting nominee, and the music branch might throw out something weird, but for me, there has never been a more jaw-dropping moment than City of God getting into the Best Director category (though "Alone Yet Not Alone" occasionally rivals it).  This was not predicted by anyone-City of God had been Brazil's Foreign Language Film submission the year before, in 2002 (since it came out internationally in 2002), but it was still eligible since it wasn't nominated, for all other categories the year after...however, that doesn't happen, and most assumed that the fifth nomination for Best Director would go to Anthony Minghella (Cold Mountain), Gary Ross (Seabiscuit), or Jim Sheridan (In America).  City of God wasn't even mentioned in the Entertainment Weekly predictions for either Director or Adapted Screenplay, and so that it was able to get nominations in both (separate branches!) without it raising the antennae of Oscar prognosticators is still staggering to me, and something I hope for every single year.  As a result, as we close out our week devoted to Best Cinematography, I'm excited to share my experience of finally seeing a film that had developed some myth in my memory as a result of that morning.

(Spoilers Ahead) City of God takes place slightly out of order, with a bunch of the film being told in flashback before we learn much about the end results of these characters (the fancy term for this is in medias res).  The movie focuses on Rocket (Rodrigues as an adult, Otavio as a child), a young boy living in a poor neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro (nicknamed the "City of God"), whose older brother Goose is killed during a motel heist by L'il Dice (da Hora as an adult, Silva as a child), who is shown to be something of a sociopath.  Years later, Dice is now L'il Ze, and Rocket is a hipster who loves photography.  Ze is now a crime lord, running the drug ring in the city, and whose only friend is Benny (Haagensen), a handsome young man who starts dating Angelica (Braga), the girl whom Rocket has a crush on.  Benny eventually starts to branch away from Ze, which Ze cannot comprehend since Benny is the only person he's ever really cared about, and during a club accident someone who is trying to kill Ze kills Benny instead, ending the promise of one young man who seemed able to get out of the City of God.  Eventually, Rocket gets the opportunity to photograph both police corruption (the officers take bribes from Ze so that he can keep doing his drug trade) and Ze's dead body after some young members of his gang called the "Runts" are tired of his mistreatment of them, and want his business for themselves (echoing in many ways the murder of Goose earlier in the film).  Rocket uses the photo of Ze (but not the police, for fear of more violence) to get an internship at a newspaper, seeing this as his way out of the City of God even though he doesn't take the moral opportunity of showing the full corruption systemic to the place.

There's a lot more to this film than just that plot summary.  The film is 130 minutes long, and it doesn't relent, and for the most part it's not repetitive, which is usually the case when gang-related films extend that long.  The movie itself, though, perhaps has too much plot.  The film is epic in scope, trying to encompass an enormous number of characters, as well as a large span of time & plot, but in doing so it jumbles its narrative.  The story of Benny, for example, totally supersedes that of Goose earlier in the film, because we spend more time with Benny & have stronger hopes that he'll get out.  These occasional sharp blows work-the death of L'il Ze is shocking not because the audience sympathizes with him, but because we see that his reign of terror will continue with the Runts; it makes the movie strong, but uneven.

The movie's four Oscar nominations therefore run to the middle for me.  Meirelles would do better two years later with The Constant Gardener, a movie with less distraction in terms of its principle characters, but this is a distinctive film, and after watching it, pretty influential in later movies.  The cinematography is mesmerizing, but again inconsistent-the care you see with L'il Dice's killing of Goose is shocking in the way it's lensed (frequently from a downward angle so you get the full effect of the monstrosity of this moment), but other portions of the movie are filmed rather conventionally, as if they're saving up for the big shots.  The same can be said for the rapid fire editing, occasionally giving us frightening longshots (in the killing of Benny) but other times cutting away needlessly.  Overall, City of God is thought-provoking & distinctive, so I get the Oscar nominations surprise, even if years later its flaws are easier to spot.