Essay On City Of God

City of God (Meirelles 2002) was an eye opening film about the life of the people living in favelas in Rio de Janeiro. It depicts the gruesome details of growing up in a slum and the choices youths must make in order to survive their reality. In an article by Joanne Laurier called “Sincere, but avoiding difficult questions”, Laurier attacks director Fernando Meirelles on his artistic choices when creating his film City of God (Meirelles 2002). However, Laurier completely misses what Meirelles brought to the film and the impact it had on its audience. In her article, Laurier states that the film treats its characters with too much detachment and over emphasizes the brutality which causes no sympathy for the victims in the film, when in reality the complete opposite is true (Laurier, Joanne). Throughout
While it is true that Meirelles doesn’t quite mention the politics going on during the timeline, the film is not completely without it nor does this fact take away from the horrors that he presented in the film. The City of God (Meirelles 2002) mentions the fact that the poor were sent to these favelas so they were kept out of the growing city. The film also depicts how corrupt the government can be within the favelas. It shows that not only were the people of the city corrupted by drugs and money, the police were just as corrupt. After getting arrested, the audience sees Li’l Zé being released by the police with no consequences from law enforcement while Carrot is taken to jail (Meirelles 2002). We, as the film’s audience, can see that the government is not in working order just by the fact that such a large population can be run by drugs and gangs without any interference from the