40in40 – Cidade de Deus

15May09

My Netflix rating: 4/5, good movie, great cinematography… i just get freaked out when i see kids swearing and killing.

“Hoods don’t fall in love, they just get horny.
Hoods don’t talk, they just vomit words.
Hoods never stop, they just take a break.” –Bernice

It’s a whole other world in the City of God.  There seems to be a different breed of people that live there, one that doesn’t follow the normal rules of human existence.  The children don’t play on the streets the way we would expect.  The families aren’t tied together in the sort of blood we’re used to.  The currency in this city is drugs and guns.  But a closer examination of this world shows that, frighteningly, the people are not so different from us.  Yes, the rules are very different, but the people are just like you and me.

How easy would it be to kill if that’s all I knew?  Is moral fiber inherent to every person, or is it socially constructed?  Thomas Hobbes claims that are all men naturally evil and are in need of a leviathan to govern them.  On the other side of the same coin, John Locke postulates that the human mind is a blank slate and everything around it forms its opinions and desires.  This movie and its children fill the middle of this controversial coin.

I can’t seem to put a coherent thought together about it.  I just keep thinking it’s natural, that I know people who live like this.  No, the “hoods” I know don’t murder or do crazy drugs, but they didn’t exactly evolve the way that I did either.  Their external factors have forced them into a different way of life, but it’s just as likely that I could have gone down that path.  Really, who’s the say that I would act any differently if I lived in the City of God?

There’s a monster in this movie by the name of Zé Pequeno (or Lil’Zé).  He’s the center of all the violence and anarchy in the city and he epitomizes Hobbe’s theory of how crazy a man would act without any government.  He’s contrasted sharply by the main character, Buscapé (Rocket), who seems to have a very honest heart of hearts.  But we’re able to catch glimpses of both of them within each other.  The actor who portrays Zé Pequeno explains his character as “a normal person, but someone who through the ironies of destiny took a wrong turn somewhere.”  See, if he had the same chances as Rocket (or at least the same passion for the normal things in life, like girls and a career), maybe he wouldn’t have grown up half bad.  But, then again, if Rocket had the chance to maim and kill like Zé Pequeno, would he have turned out the other way?

Pardon me as I keep jumping around, but I have one final thought.  In this City of God, where is God?  When the clay of life is molded by the all the hands (and guns) around it, how much room is allowed for the ultimate potter?  Is it God that’s working through those hands?  Then, when life is taken away by those same hands, was God a part of that too?  Was He ever a part of anything?  I have my opinion, but does it really matter?

“It was like a message from God: ‘Honesty doesn’t pay, sucker.’” –Rocket

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Tags: city of god, fear, guns, hobbes, little rocket, locke