Fernando Meirelles
City Of God

THE REVIEW

This film was warmly recommended to me by a dear friend, with whom cinephilia is just one of many points of contact. Considering that:
a) for the friend in question, it is a masterpiece,
b) I have a high regard for the friend in question and his opinion,  
it is with great interest that I approached this film, of which, in my boundless ignorance, I had never heard before.

I must say that, indeed, it is truly a splendid film, in which every element contributes to forming a complex tapestry of a world, of a reality, often stereotyped and dealt with rather superficially. It deals with the favelas, the varied human undergrowth that lives and survives on the fringes of the empire, on the edge of legality.
In Meirelles' work (2002), based on the novel by Paulo Lins, the story is set in a Brazilian favela, called City of God, actually a cluster of public housing, shacks, and huts where, in the '60s, workers, laborers, small craftsmen were cheerfully invited to move, who over the years, have seen and experienced the economic and social collapse of a country.

The film is a complex and choral narrative that starts in the '60s and reaches the '80s, following the adventures of a series of characters, including the internal narrator, Buscapé, the only boy who will manage to free himself from the infernal circles of violence, crime, drugs, and death, achieving his dream of becoming a journalist, while his peers, one by one, kill and end up being killed by bullets and drugs.
The antithesis of good Buscapé is represented by Dadinho, a young boy with a dominant and violent character, who will succeed in the rise to local crime, becoming, through a series of murders, the most feared criminal in the city, with the nickname Zé Pequeno.

But one of the beautiful things about this film is how you are led, without a break, to follow the stories of many other characters, who are thus secondary only in words, because, in reality, every action of a community member reflects on the others, even over time, and often with dramatic outcomes (above all the trivial reasons from which the gang war that animates the film's finale originates).

A film that is a mirror of society, facing its physiological changes over the years, offering a sincere reflection free from easy moralism, a vision that speaks of dust and poverty, but also of the great dignity and humanity shown by these characters, who, for better or worse, never give up.

A truly great film.
If you haven't seen it yet, do it!
Categorical imperative.