RIO DE JANEIRO – I’m really looking forward to the 2016 Olympics.

I don’t really care about sports, per se, but I am going to watch the run up to the games vividly and then I’m going to laugh and laugh and laugh.

Why?

Well, besides the fact that landing at the airport is one of the most dangerous approaches in the world, I have had the good fortune to see the 2002 film, City of God (Cidade de Deus).

Based on the pseudo-autobiographical novel by Paulo Lins, the film depicts just how Rio became the home of some of the most horrific organized crime, urban violence, and squalid shantytowns in the known world.

The film covers roughly two decades starting in the 1960′s and chronicles the lives of two young men: protagonist and aspiring journo, Rocket, and his Negaverse mustachioed opposite, the psychotic drug lord known as  “Li’l Zé.”

Both grow up in the favelas jokingly referred to as “The City of God,” public housing painted bright colors to mask the fact that they are essentially squatter camps for the poor.  Rocket does his best to stay on the straight and narrow, developing a love of photography and pussy (or at least he suspects he will love it) while Li’l Zé develops a taste for crime -and moreover taking lives- while running with Rocket’s older brother’s gang.  The gang is based around basic banditry, stealing money and gas for their neighbors and dodging the comically crooked cops.  After a horribly botched motel stick up, the gang breaks up, and only Li’l Zé and his friend, Benny, remain.  Li’l Zé claims the turf and -cut to a decade later- the crime is no longer merry banditry but total and crazed nihilistic violence fueled by drug turf.  Guns begin to flow in at an alarming rate to protect that turf and  Rocket begins depicting the violence and savagery with his camera. Thus begins his career as a journalist chronicling the rise of Li’l Zé.  The escalation of arms peaks in an orgy of violence with heavily armed kids taking up sides as Li’l Zé battles it out with victim-turned gangster, Knockout Ned.

Fun fact: Knockout Ned was played by Brazilian musician, Seu Jorge, who would go on to play Pele in another of my favorite films, Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Needless to say, I had a pretty good giggle when I saw Knockout Ned strumming away and singing Bowie tunes in Portuguese.

I suppose the first word that would come to most people’s minds after seeing City of God is, “shocking.”  And it is, but it’s that very best kind of shocking because you aren’t shocked that someone was so sick that they thought this up but rather lived through it. As a kid!  It’s very exciting to me to know that parts of this planet can be very, very fucked up while other parts can be rather nice.  Not sure why.  Just like contrast, I guess.  I also like to know that things can always get worse.

And things have only gone on to get worse in Rio.  Hoo boy!

In a 2004 interview, author Lins, said:

“The world of the favela today is much more cruel than when I was growing up there or even as I show it in my book… If I were to write about the way things are today, I would start the book with a pile of rubber tires, gasoline and someone being burned alive.”

For real.  You will discover this bonus hardcoritude for yourself if you plan to drop the scratch on a copy of City of God (and trust me, scratch you will need), as the DVD comes with another DVD featuring João Moreira Salles and  Kátia Lund’s 1999 documentary, “News From a Personal War.”  Rio’s near-crippling urban violence is depicted and you get to see both the heavily armed teen aged drug dealers claiming to be protecting their neighborhoods and the Rainbow Six-style special police units that crash up the hills each day to engage in prolonged gun battles using some of the (then) most up-to-date firearms in the world.  Guns are still flowing into Rio’s favelas at an alarming rate and you’ll never guess where they’re all coming from ohjeezbigspoiler it’s us.

The documentary, like City of God itself, is an eyeopener but -and I cannot stress this enough-  DON’T WATCH CITY OF GOD AND THE DOCUMENTARY IN THE SAME SITTING.

…unless you want to be Cash Money.

Tags: Economics, Politics, Videophilia // Add Comment »