Please turn off cellphones during screening April 17, 2012 (XXIV:13)

Please turn off cellphones during screening
April 17, 2012 (XXIV:13)
Online versions of the Goldenrod Handouts are in color
Fernando Meirelles, CITY OF GOD (2002, 130 min.)
Directed by Fernando Meirelles
Based on the novel by Paulo Lins
Screenplay by Bráulio Mantovani
Produced by Andrea Barata Ribeiro and Mauricio Andrade
Ramos
Original Music by Ed Cortês and Antonio Pinto
Cinematography by César Charlone
Film Editing by Daniel Rezende
Alexandre Rodrigues…Buscapé - Rocket
Leandro Firmino…Zé Pequeno - Li'l Zé
Phellipe Haagensen…Bené - Benny
Douglas Silva…Dadinho - Li'l Dice
Jonathan Haagensen…Cabeleira - Shaggy
Matheus Nachtergaele…Sandro Cenoura - Carrot
Seu Jorge…Mané Galinha - Knockout Ned
Jefechander Suplino…Alicate - Clipper
Alice Braga…Angélica
Emerson Gomes…Barbantinho - Stringy
Edson Oliveira…Barbantinho Adulto - Older Stringy
Michel de Souza…Bené Criança - Young Benny
Roberta Rodrigues…Berenice - Bernice
Luis Otávio…Buscapé Criança - Young Rocket
Maurício Marques…Cabeção – Melonhead
FERNANDO MEIRELLES (November 9, 1955, São Paulo, São
Paulo, Brazil) has 17 director credits: 2011 360, 2011
“Brazukas”, 2009 Som e Fúria - O Filme, 2009 “Sound & Fury”,
2008 Blindness, 2002-2005 “Cidade dos Homens”, 2005 The
Constant Gardener, 2002 City of God, 2001 Maids, 2000 “Brava
Gente”, 1998 The Nutty Boy 2, 1998 E no meio passa um trem,
1997 “A Comedy of Private Lives”, 1989 “Rá-Tim-Bum” (30
episodes), 1986 Olhar Eletrônico, 1983 Brasília, and 1983 Marly
Normal.
BRÁULIO MANTOVANI has 13 film and TV screenplay credits:
2010 Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, 2010 VIPs, 2008 Last Stop
174, 2008 Linha de Passe, 2007 Chega de Saudade, 2007 Elite
Squad, 2007 Querô: A Damned Report, 2006 The Year My
Parents Went on Vacation, 2005 Nanoilusão, 2002 Bus 174,
2002 City of God, 2002 “Cidade dos Homens”, and 2000 “Brava
Gente.”
ED CORTÊS has 5 composer credits: 2007 Not by Chance, 2002
Onde a Terra Acaba, 2002 City of God, 2002 “Cidade dos
Homens”, and 2001 Behind the Sun.
ANTONIO PINTO has 7 music credits: 2007 Love in the Time of
Cholera, 2006 “Um Menino Muito Maluquinho” (26 episodes),
2005 “Jonny Zero”, 2004 Collateral, 1998 The Nutty Boy 2, and
1998 Central Station.
CÉSAR CHARLONE (1958, Montevideo, Uruguay) has 19
cinematographer credits: 2011 La Redota - Una Historia de
Artigas, 2010 Futebol Brasileiro, 2009 “Independent Lens”
(Stranded: The Andes Plane Crash Survivors), 2008/II Blackout,
2008 Blindness, 2007 Stranded: I've Come from a Plane That
Crashed on the Mo untains, 2007 El baño del Papa, 2005 The
Constant Gardener, 2004 “Sucker Free City”, 2002 City of God,
2000 “Brava Gente”, 2000 Pierre Fatumbi Verger: Mensageiro
Entre Dois Mundos, 1996 Como Nascem os Anjos, 1995 Two
Billion Hearts, 1989 Doida Demais, 1987 The Man in the Black
Meirelles—CITY OF GOD—2
Cape, 1987 Feliz Ano Velho, 1985 Aqueles Dois, and 1984 Em
Nome da Segurança Nacional.
ALEXANDRE RODRIGUES… Buscapé – Rocket (May 21, 1983,
Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) has 12 acting credits:
2010 “Escrito nas Estrelas” (90 episodes), 2009 “Paraíso” (160
episodes), 2008 “Tiempo final”, 2007 “Antônia”, 2007
Forbidden to Forbid, 2006 “Sinhá Moça” (71 episodes), 2006
Memórias da Chibata, 2005 Cafundó, 2004 “Cabocla” (61
episodes), 2003 “Cidade dos Homens”, 2002 City of God, and
2000 “Brava Gente.”
LEANDRO FIRMINO… Zé Pequeno - Li'l Zé (June 23, 1978, Rio
de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) has 14 acting credits 2011 “A
Grande Família”, 2010 “S.O.S. Emergência”, 2009 “ForçaTarefa”, 2007 O Homem Que Desafiou o Diabo, 2006-2007
“Vidas Opostas” (75 episodes), 2006 Cheating in Chains, 2005
Cafundó, 2005 “Mano a
Mano”, 2004 “A
Diarista”, 2003 “Casseta
& Planeta Urgente”, 2003
O Corneteiro Lopes, 2002
“Cidade dos Homens”,
2002 City of God, and
2000 “Brava Gente.”
PHELLIPE HAAGENSEN…
Bené – Benny (1984, Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil) has 11
acting credits: 2010
“Força-Tarefa”, 2010 A
Thousand Pardons, 2008
Plastic City, 2008 “Casos
e Acasos”, 2008 Máncora, 2006-2007 “Vidas Opostas” (51
episodes), 2006 Sonhos de Peixe, 2002-2004 “Cidade dos
Homens” (9 episodes), 2004 Brothers in Faith, 2002 City of God,
and 2000 “Brava Gente.”
DOUGLAS SILVA… Dadinho - Li'l Dice (1988 in Rio de Janeiro,
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) has 12 acting credits: 2010 “Os
Gozadores”, 2010 “Aventuras do Didi”, 2009 “India - A Love
Story” (43 episodes), 2008 Last Stop 174, 2008 Blindness, 2007
“Toma Lá, Dá Cá”, 2007 City of Men, 2007 “Carga Pesada”,
2002-2005 “Cidade dos Homens” (19 episodes), 2002 “Sítio do
Pica-Pau Amarelo”, 2002 City of God, and 2000 “Brava Gente.”
JONATHAN HAAGENSEN… Cabeleira – Shaggy (February 23,
1983, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) has 15 acting
credits: 2010 Bróder, 2009 Embarque Imediato, 2008 “Os
Mutantes”, 2007 “Paraíso Tropical” (105 episodes), 2007 City of
Men, 2006 Noel: The Samba Poet, 2006 The Passenger: Adult
Secrets, 2006 “Sob Nova Direção”, 2002-2005 “Cidade dos
Homens” (8 episodes), 2004 O Diabo a Quatro, 2004 “A
Diarista”, 2004 “Da Cor do Pecado” (24 episodes), 2002 Seja o
Que Deus Quiser, 2002 City of God, and 2000 “Brava Gente.”
MATHEUS NACHTERGAELE… Sandro Cenoura – Carrot
(January 3, 1969, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil) has 41 acting
credits, some of which are 2010 “S.O.S. Emergência”, 2010 O
Bem Amado, 2008-2009 “Ó Paí, Ó”, 2008 La virgen negra, 2008
Birdwatchers, 2008 “Queridos Amigos” (25 episodes), 2007
“Amazônia: De Galvez a Chico Mendes”, 2006 Bog of Beasts,
2006 Journey to the End of the Night, 2005 “América” (80
episodes), 2005 Red Carpet, 2005 Árido Movie, 2005 Delicate
Crime, 2004 “Da Cor do Pecado” (133 episodes), 2002 Eclipse,
2002 City of God, 2001 Bufo & Spallanzani, 1999 Castle RaTim-Bum, 1999 Gêmeas, 1998 Kenoma, 1998 Midnight, 1998
Central Station, 1997 Four Days in September, and 1997 Anahy
de las Misiones.
SEU JORGE… Mané Galinha - Knockout Ned (b. Jorge Mário da
Silva, June 8, 1970, Belford Roxo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) has 11
acting credits: 2012 Reis e Ratos, 2010 Elite Squad: The Enemy
Within, 2008 Carmo, Hit the Road, 2008 The Escapist, 2007
Sleepwalkers, 2006 Elipsis, 2006 Tarantino's Mind, 2005 House
of Sand, 2004 The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, 2002 “Os
Normais”, and 2002 City of God.
ALICE BRAGA…
Angélica (April 15,
1983, São Paulo, Brazil)
has 21 acting credits,
among them 2012 On
the Road (completed),
2011 The Rite, 2010
Predators Motion
Comics: Moment of
Extraction, 2010
Predators, 2010 Repo
Men, 2009 Crossing
Over, 2008 Blindness,
2008 Redbelt, 2007 I Am
Legend, 2007 The Milky
Way, 2006 Journey to the End of the Night, 2006 Only God
Knows, 2005 Lower City, 2002 City of God, and 1998
Trampolim/
ROBERTA RODRIGUES… Berenice – Bernice has 25 acting
credits: 2011 “Insensato Coração” (14 episodes), 2011
Desenrola, 2010 “As Cariocas”, 2010 5 x Favela, Now by
Ourselves, 2008-2009 “Três Irmãs” (92 episodes), 2008 If
Nothing Else Works Out, 2008 “Casos e Acasos”, 2007 “Faça
Sua História”, 2007 “Dicas de um Sedutor”, 2007 “Paraíso
Tropical” (87 episodes), 2005-2007 “Tecendo o Saber” (39
episodes), 2006 Noel: The Samba Poet, 2006 “Páginas da vida”,
2006 “Sob Nova Direção”, 2006 Mulheres do Brasil, 2006
“Filhos do Carnaval”, 2006 “JK”, 2006 Desejo, 2002-2005
“Cidade dos Homens” (7 episodes), 2005 “A Lua Me Disse” (8
episodes), 2004 O Diabo a Quatro, 2004 “Cabocla” (23
episodes), 2003 “Mulheres Apaixonadas”, 2003 Garrincha:
Lonely Star, and 2002 City of God.
Fernando Meirelles (from Wikipedia)
Meirelles' father, José de Souza Meirelles, is a gastroenterologist
who travelled regularly to Asia and North America (among other
regions of the world), which gave opportunities for Fernando to
have contact with different cultures and places. His mother,
Sônia Junqueira Ferreira Meirelles, is daughter of farmers and
worked with landscape architecture and interior design for a long
time. Second youngest of four children, he saw his older brother,
Meirelles—CITY OF GOD—3
José Marcos, die in a car-bike accident when he was only 4 years
old. His two sisters, Márcia and Silvinha, graduated in theater
and psychology, respectively. Fernando grew up in Alto dos
Pinheiros, district of the West Zone of São Paulo, and spending
every vacation in farms from both sides of his parents. "Even I
have a farm. I don't know why I bought it," he says.
His first experience with cinema was with his father,
who often directed 8 mm films during his job at the university.
Mostly western and thriller parodies, he used his relatives and
friends as actors. At 11, in 1967, he spent a year in the United
States, precisely in California, where he got in touch with the
hippie movement, which impressed him. At 13, with a borrowed
Super 8 camera, Meirelles started producing small films,
encouraged by Norman McLaren's animations.
He studied at the School of Architecture and Urban
Planning at the University of São Paulo during the 1980s. His
graduation work was done in the form of a film, instead of the
traditional designs of the other students: he went to Japan and
bought professional video equipment to do the job. He presented
it and graduated with the minimum acceptable grade.
When studying architecture at the University of São Paulo,
Meirelles became involved in experimental film-making. After
several years in independent television, he became an
advertisement film director. He is still one of the partners of O2
Filmes, the biggest Brazilian advertisement firm, which has
produced City of God, Domésticas (Maids) and Viva Voz.
Along with four friends (Paul Morelli, Marcelo Machado, Dário
Vizeu and Bob Salatini), Meirelles began his career with
experimental films. Eventually, they formed an independent
production company Olhar Eletrônico. Subsequently, new friends
joined the group: Renato Barbiere, Agilson Araujo, Toniko and
Marcelo Tas. In 1982 the company aired TV programs on current
affairs, as well as the children series Castelo Rá-Tim-Bum (RaTim-Bum Castle), with 180 episodes. In addition to obtaining
high ratings, they also introduced a refreshing humorous
informality in news reporting.
By the end of the 1980s, he became increasingly
interested on the advertising market. In 1990, Meirelles and
friends closed down Olhar Eletrônico, opening an advertising
business, O2 Films. One decade was enough for him to become
one of the most important and sought-after advertising producers.
In 1997, Meirelles read the book Paulo Lins's City of
God. He decided to adapt it to film, which was done in 2002, and
decided that the actors in it would be selected among the
inhabitants of slums. In a final triage, from 400 children, they
selected 200, with whom they worked for the shooting of the
film. The filming was done with a professional crew. The film
was a national and international success.
In 2004, he was nominated for the Academy Award for
Best Director for City of God. Also, at the 2004 Cannes Film
Festival, the movie received four nominations: Best Director,
Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Photography and Best Editing.
With the recognition, he was offered a job in Hollywood. With
The Constant Gardener, he again received critical acclaim,
receiving several nominations, including for four Academy
Awards and the Golden Globe Award for Best Director. Rachel
Weisz went on tho win the Academy Award and the Golden
Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Meirelles insisted that
the soundtrack be based on the music of African countries, and
most of the filming was done in Kenya.
In 2007, he began shooting Blindness, a film adaptation
of Nobel-prize winner José Saramago's book, Ensaio Sobre a
Cegueira. The film, which was released in 2008, was the opening
film of the Cannes Film Festival.
Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian (2 January 2003):
This electrifying picture is part tender coming-of-age film and
part gang-warfare epic from the Brazilian slum, or favela, told
from the viewpoint of the children who manage to be both its
underclass and its criminal overlords. It's a movie with all the
dials cranked up to 11, an overwhelming, intoxicating assault on
the senses, and a thriller so tense that you might have the red seat
plush in front of you - or even some unfortunate's hair - gripped
in both fists.
Amores Perros - increasingly the touchstone of the
Latin new wave - began with a car chase and a dead animal.
Director Fernando Meirelles's City of God, co-produced under
the aegis of Walter Salles, has something similar, but invests his
images with more overtly mythic qualities, irresistibly potent
from the very beginning. A swaggering gangster is about to
slaughter a chicken in the middle of the favela; it escapes, and
there is a hilarious but still oddly gripping chase sequence as the
bird makes its bid for freedom.
As it exits an alley and scampers into the nearest the
place has to a main thoroughfare, the chicken, with a hundred
bullets and cleavers with its name on it, finds itself face to face
with the movie's leading character, 18-year-old Rocket
(Alexandre Rodrigues), who has every reason to think he is
going to be murdered. Behind Rocket appear a number of lawenforcement officers in armoured vehicles making one of their
periodic terrified and ineffective forays into the 'hood; in front of
him, the gangster and his courtiers all produce weapons. A
Meirelles—CITY OF GOD—4
wacky, black-comic interlude has morphed with appalling speed
into a potential bloodbath.
The sacrificial purpose of the chicken conveys with the
force of a blunt instrument how cheap life has come to be in the
ghetto, and how victimhood and aggression have become fused
together. The wiseguys, their cowering subordinates, their stoic
womenfolk and the dead bodies around them are all chickens and they are mostly all children.
Never before have criminals looked so young: prepubescent, in fact. The City of God is like one vast, dysfunctional
family, neighbours from hell with no
neighbours, with no parents or
concerned adults. It is a cross between
an orphanage and an abattoir.
The movie tells the story of
this slum, a grim housing project for
the poor, from the late 1960s to the
early 1980s; it tracks the story of both
Rocket, a would-be press
photographer (and a character whose
purpose is probably to ventriloquise
the sensibility of Paulo Lins, on whose
novel the film is based), and Li'l Dice,
who follows his gangster vocation
with the passionate severity of a monk
- the latter renaming himself, having
notionally grown to man's estate, as Li'l Ze (Leandro Firmino da
Hora).
Crime and football are traditionally the ways out of the
ghetto, and Meirelles raises this second option only to obliterate
it. A bunch of kids gather round to play keepy-uppy; but this is
abandoned when three hoodlums rush on to the pitch, seeking
refuge from the police - and football, the commodity in which
Brazil is an unquestioned superpower, is never mentioned again.
What is left is the great game of violence, of intimidation and
rape, of abject gang loyalty for children for whom the ties of
family, church or nationhood are meaningless jokes: seething
with rage, resentment and collectively enacting one continuous,
unending scattered act of pre-emptive revenge.
The favela known as the City of God has been described
as the film's chief "character", and as a location it looks
unglamorously real in a way that cannot be approximated by set
design. There are some scenes at the beach, but the familiar
world of Rio is light years away. At first glance, the dreary rows
of jerry-built sheds in the middle of nowhere look very much like
sheds for factory-farmed animals, or an encampment for refugees
or prisoners of war. It is seen in broad daylight, at night, and at
one stage in a glowing crimson sunset. But nothing alleviates its
grimness and inhumanity - at the very best it resembles a
purpose-built suburb of poverty.
Crime has, in a nauseous reversal of liberal social
thinking, almost been "designed into" the City of God, but any
foreseeable conventional breakdown of law and order has
evolved one or two steps further into the corruption and
degradation of children. Li'l Dice, a tiny kid, plans a staggeringly
audacious hold-up of a brothel, but in a fit of pique at being
relegated to the status of lookout by his older comrades, returns
to the scene of the crime to murder every single innocent
customer and employee of the "motel" - it is a truly chilling
moment of unalloyed evil.
Meirelles's storytelling rushes forward at a full,
breathless tilt, swerving, accelerating, doubling back on itself,
amplifying the roles and experiences of incidental characters. A
bravura narrative moment reveals itself when he discloses the
history of one single apartment, showing how it becomes
degraded and denatured as it ceases to be a family home and
becomes a drug-dealer's den. Meirelles's film flashes and sweeps
around you, dizzying, disorientating, intoxicating.
His mastery of his material consists not merely in the
adaptation of Paulo Lins's novel, but a direct engagement with
the ghetto itself, and his
triumphant recruitment of a
veritable army of nonprofessionals is the result of
an almost military raid on this
dangerous territory. This is
something that combines
film-making with oral
history. It is a compelling
piece of work.
Roger Ebert (24 January
2003):
"City of God"
churns with furious energy as
it plunges into the story of the
slum gangs of Rio de Janeiro. Breathtaking and terrifying,
urgently involved with its characters, it announces a new director
of great gifts and passions: Fernando Meirelles. Remember the
name. The film has been compared with Scorsese's
"GoodFellas," and it deserves the comparison. Scorsese's film
began with a narrator who said that for as long as he could
remember he wanted to be a gangster. The narrator of this film
seems to have had no other choice.
The movie takes place in slums constructed by Rio to
isolate the poor people from the city center. They have grown
into places teeming with life, color, music and excitement--and
also with danger, for the law is absent and violent gangs rule the
streets. In the virtuoso sequence opening the picture, a gang is
holding a picnic for its members when a chicken escapes. Among
those chasing it is Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), the narrator.
He suddenly finds himself between two armed lines: the gang on
one side, the cops on the other.
As the camera whirls around him, the background
changes and Rocket shrinks from a teenager into a small boy,
playing soccer in a housing development outside Rio. To
understand his story, he says, we have to go back to the
beginning, when he and his friends formed the Tender Trio and
began their lives of what some would call crime and others
would call survival.
The technique of that shot--the whirling camera, the
flashback, the change in colors from the dark brightness of the
slum to the dusty sunny browns of the soccer field--alert us to a
movie that is visually alive and inventive as few films are.
Meirelles began as a director of TV commercials, which
gave him a command of technique—and, he says, trained him to
work quickly, to size up a shot and get it, and move on. Working
with the cinematographer Cesar Charlone, he uses quick-cutting
and a mobile, hand-held camera to tell his story with the haste
and detail it deserves. Sometimes those devices can create a film
Meirelles—CITY OF GOD—5
that is merely busy, but "City of God" feels like sight itself, as
we look here and then there, with danger or opportunity
everywhere.
The gangs have money and guns because they sell drugs
and commit robberies. But they are not very rich because their
activities are limited to the City of God, where no one has much
money. In an early crime, we see the stickup of a truck carrying
cans of propane gas, which the crooks sell to homeowners. Later
there is a raid on a bordello, where the customers are deprived of
their wallets. (In a flashback, we see that raid a second time, and
understand in a chilling moment why there were dead bodies at a
site where there was not supposed to be any killing.) As Rocket
narrates the lore of the district he knows so well, we understand
that poverty has undermined all social structures in the City of
God, including the family. The gangs provide structure and
status. Because the gang death rate is so high, even the leaders
tend to be surprisingly young, and life has no value except when
you are taking it. There is an astonishing sequence when a
victorious gang leader is killed in a way he least expects, by the
last person he would have expected, and we see that essentially
he has been killed not by a person but by the culture of crime.
Yet the film is not all grim and violent. Rocket also
captures some of the Dickensian flavor of the City of God, where
a riot of life provides ready-made characters with nicknames,
personas and trademarks. Some like Benny (Phelipe Haagensen)
are so charismatic they almost seem to transcend the usual rules.
Others, like Knockout Ned and Lil Ze, grow from kids into
fearsome leaders, their words enforced by death.
The movie is based on a novel by Paulo Lins, who grew
up in the City of God, somehow escaped it, and spent eight years
writing his book. A note at the end says it is partly based on the
life of Wilson Rodriguez, a Brazilian photographer. We watch as
Rocket obtains a (stolen) camera that he treasures and takes
pictures from his privileged position as a kid on the streets. He
gets a job as an assistant on a newspaper delivery truck, asks a
photographer to develop his film, and is startled to see his
portrait of an armed gang leader on the front page of the paper.
"This is my death sentence," he thinks, but no: The
gangs are delighted by the publicity and pose for him with their
guns and girls. And during a vicious gang war, he is able to
photograph the cops killing a gangster--a murder they plan to
pass off as gang-related. That these events throb with immediate
truth is indicated by the fact that Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the
newly elected president of Brazil, actually reviewed and praised
"City of God" as a needful call for change.
In its actual level of violence, "City of God" is less
extreme than Scorsese's "Gangs of New York," but the two films
have certain parallels. In both films, there are really two cities:
the city of the employed and secure, who are served by law and
municipal services, and the city of the castaways, whose
alliances are born of opportunity and desperation. Those who live
beneath rarely have their stories told.
"City of God" does not exploit or condescend, does not
pump up its stories for contrived effect, does not contain silly and
reassuring romantic sidebars, but simply looks, with a
passionately knowing eye, at what it knows.
ONE MORE IN THE SPRING 2012 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXIV
Apr 24 Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight 2008
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Color versions of the Goldenrod Handouts are online at the BFS website.