City of God

I've been telling everyone I'm going to Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires later this year travel books and language tapes in hand not really knowing much, keeping the faith and hoping our guide and the people we meet will show us the way, choose the ones to trust, enough knowledge to get by, spontaneity and natural instinct all the way ~ that's the way I live, that's the way I travel.

I rented the above titled movie yesterday on a whim after my NYC friend Craig recommended it to me knowing about my trip after watching a travel show about Rio including its slums "favela" ~ all of it, the good and the bad, makes him want to stow away in my bags on my trip to South America. I heard of this movie when it was first out in the independent theater, but I never got around to seeing it until now ~ it's the right time.

I saw the movie with eyes and mouth at first half covered as I watched the heinous daily crime that once was - hopefully not so much now - in the favela of Rio in the 70s driven by drugs, hunger for power fed off of fear, dealers and addicts, a way of life that encircled and entwined the community in a bloodbath of gunshots and constant death of friends and family that would numb anyone's senses after awhile. Tiny children brandished guns and shot at obstacles to their power becoming adult monsters for all to fear - but in the end slamming to the earth in a pool of blood for all to see strewn across front page wide-screen angled picture shots.

Amongst the dust of the violence, Rocket, came through a smiling child then a successful professional photographer man who captured the reality of the Rio favela hoodlum lifestyle and mentality through pictures and freeze frames of stories all held in the eyes alone. Cute and endearing as he and his buddy tried to commit crimes as youngster potential hoodlums but couldn't because everyone whom they thought they would rob or murder turned out to be "too cool" or nice to mess with. Thank God in the City of God, there is a plan for those who deserve to shine through the gunshots in the night.

Wonderful story. I want to see it again, but I just don't think I could take it. Ha! But I have the movie for another week or so ~ I'll give it some time.