Opening Scenes and Setting - 'City of God'

In this post I will be looking at the ways in which the location of the favela is introduced in the opening sequence of 'City of God'.

                

In this opening scene the setting is seen as extremely hectic, chaotic and violent, yet a place which oozes Brazilian culture. The scene opens with a close up of a knife being sharpened, with the screen continually cutting to black. The editing is fast and there is crosscutting from the knife being sharpened, the dead chicken and the band playing and people dancing. The extremely fast shots of the dead chickens are jarring and show the potentially violent nature of the favelas. 

The people dancing and the band playing reinforce cultural iconography of Brazil, a country associated with Samba. At the start of the scene there are only close ups or extreme close ups which don’t show the setting in full but help establish the hectic environment the narrative will take place in. The shots of the chicken looking around (with it's leg tethered to suggest that there is no escape from this environment), paired with the close ups on the chicken's face, help the audience feel the stress of the environment we are in but also create expectations that the setting traps those who live there (something that is repeatedly reinforced through the tightly framed shots). When the chicken runs away the viewer becomes more aware of the poverty in the favelas; we can see dirty streets and broken, bare houses. There is rubble and graffiti all over the street.

When the children (armed with guns) run after the chicken the constant tracking shots and extreme close ups add to the intense feeling that this is not a safe environment. The scene ends with the main character, Rocket, in the middle of a stand-off between the police and a gang, with seemingly no way out. There is an arc shot and a flashback to the main character's childhood, which reveals just how much the setting has changed for the worse in such a short space of time.