City of God

The City of God directed by Fernando Meirelles and screen play by Braulio Mantovani shows how life in the hood and family business can go wrong for young men and women who grow up in small poor towns. Andrea Barata Ribeiro produces a film that relates drug related power and gang power. Such as any gang that we have like the gangs of New York or Havana. The main characters Apresentondo (Alexandre Rodrigues) and Pequeno (Leandro Frimino) Bene (Phellipe Haagensen) grow up as hood friends that end up growing p into very different people. One dies, one is a gangster, and one is a photographer. While this all-taking place in the slum and streets of Rio de Janeiro. Everyone there is struggling for power and trying to be the “top dog”. All of them struggle for their acceptance into the gang, but as the story continues it comes down to who is the real bad guy (a gangster) and or who is the good guy (the police). The most important saying from the beginning is to “Kill or be killed”. Everyone must choose what path they are going to take at a young age because it is hard to turn back. The camera plays a huge roll in ones mans life because it sees reality and it can never lie. As we watched the young men’s futures unfold, the story becomes very believable/. In fact it is a true story.
I believe the acting in this movie was done very well the whole time I watching it I thought it was really and having it be in sub titles I think made it even better, because you got to hear it in their language instead of ours which also helped me relate it more to the characters. I believed that the actor were the real characters, I even thought that maybe these are the real people and they are just making movie about the life that they lived.
The set of this movie was done very well I thought the lighting had a huge affect on how the movie looked and how it affected many things such when it would go from black and white, when it was sad or confusing scene to a scene with much more color when things started to get good again. The costumes I thought were not that much but they didn’t need them to be because they wanted to show how poorly they lived with little money so the cheap clothing if any, but towards the end when Apresentondo want to fit in with his new friends or the better people he went out and had a friend buy him nice looking clothes with much more color.
This film had amazing cinematography there was almost everything in this movie and that is why I think that it was one of the best movies and really keeps the watcher intoned. There were many different angles from close ups of sweat drooping to having that turn into someone shooting from away. Also I high angle shot of a car driving away from this bad town as it show light ahead of them and in the front it shows the town. There were also distorted lenses from a filter lens when the scene was confusing to a clear lens when the police came.
There were also still frames of just black, or of a person of importance that they were talking about. They also showed it once in the movie where there were two scenes playing on the screen at once.
The sound affects of this film were very good at the end when the runts come they have music that sounds like they are chasing you and keeping you on your toes throughout the scene. Also in the sad times where some one dies you feel like you can hear a sad sound in the background.
Over all I thought that is was a well rounded movie with sad and happy parts and I really feel like this movie really makes you open up your eye to what is still going on in are world and horrible it is.