city of god

In my opinion there is one main message that the director is trying to convey in the city of god. that message is that violence is an endless cycle. this is seen when at first the main trouble makers are the tender trio, but eventually they stop there life of crime (or get killed) and then lil dice/ze takes other and becomes even more violent. then at the end of the film lil ze gets killed by the runts (young troublwe mamkers) and we here them talk about how they are going to talk other the city by kill anyone who gets in there way. while there words may seem like an empty threat you must remember that lil ze started gaining power at there age.

The film uses quite a lot of fast paced editing to keep up the tempo of the film. during benys party when lil ze and beny are fighting and beny eventually gets killed by blackie the director uses the setting of the party to keep up the fast paced action. the music that's playing has a fast upbeat tempo, strobe lights are the only source of light are most of the camera shots are taken with in the crowd. this makes it hard for the audience to follow what is happening and makes it seem like we are actually at the party. it not until beney is shot and the crowd has cleared that you truley understand what happend. during the scene when lil ze sends a messenger to carrot to tell him to hand over knock out ned and the messenger runs away after seeing knockout ned the screen splits into to seprate shots, one showing us carrots men chasing after the messenger and the other showing use carrots talking to knockout ned. this helps keep the fast paced action during what would of been just a conversation between two people.

because this movie is based on real events, alot of what happens in the movie reflects what was happening in cidade de deus, and many other parts of brazil, at the time. even though it is based on real events i was under the impression that some of the film would of been exagerated, but after reading a gaurdian in the article i  found that i was wrong and that in some cases the state of affiers was worse than it was depicted, even to this day the violence is still growing with marcilio dias being on of the most violent places in the world. a nurese working in one of the more violent areas dose not think of dead bodies turining up every few days as excessive.