The summer before my senior year of high school my sister and I were pretty much jobless, bored and watched a lot of films thanks to Netfilx. And one of them happened to be City of God. I remembered how powerful of a film it was and I’m thankful for the opportunity to get to watch it again and understand it more.
Since I have a creepy good memory the parallelism of the chickens and the kids was obvious the second time around. I instantly got the summary of the films from the chickens.
First off the way the story is told is very personal. The honest and conversational narration brought in the audience really close into the lives of the hoods and runts living in the city of God. I greatly appreciated the way the plot progressed because of the subplots. The explanation of each subplot kept the film moving along at a constant speed for the entire film.
Looking back on it, both the main protagonist and antagonist were the darkest skinned characters in the film. That says a lot for breaking the stereotypical rules of a protagonist-- the darker character. Yet his best friend and former light skinned partner who tried to escape the violent lifestyle, Benny, died a hero. Was the light skinned martyr or just a martyr?
As for relating the film to Liberation Theology. It makes perfect sense that the delivery of the plot was so personable, violent and heartbreaking to make the case to care about what has been going on in Brazil. The ending lines of from the narrator are meant to sting. They are meant to leave the audience with the knowledge and power to act upon the feelings taken from the entire film. Saying: now that you know this was true, that this happens and has happened-- What are you going to do about it? It sure made for a better commercial for donating for what would only be less than a dollar a day.
*The song currently playing on Pandora from the Jose Gonzalez station.
No comments:
Post a Comment