City of God (Fernando Meirelles, Katia Lund)

A kiss for a joint.

A third viewing (or fourth perhaps).

Reading my old "City of God" review once more (a very short one at that), I can still visualize and feel through the praising adjectives that I've previously used (such as 'breathless', 'brilliant' and 'powerful'), the extreme awe and cinematic revelation that I have witnessed. And even after all those years when my copy of the film rested somewhere inside the bowels of my black CD wallet, popping it back once again in the DVD player reignites a personal film experience quite unprecedented. And watching it once more, although like visually revisiting a chaotic moral hellhole, proves one thing: its power, both from its narrative drive and its despicable yet richly molded characters, is purely inexhaustible.

As the knife appears out of the initial blackness and creates contact with the chopping block in the film's raw and frantic opening scene that shows the eponymous place's abundant disorder, we suddenly see a doomed chicken which suddenly broke free of a cook's hands and inspires a hood chase. The scene, shot as if drifting between carelessness and control, may simply look like a vignette-like slip-in to expose the life in the ironically named slums, but it is particularly vital for the film. In its entirety, with its non-linear progress, we eagerly anticipate the film's highs and lows as the protagonist Buscape (Rocket), played by Alexandre Rodrigues, narrates the brief but violent history of the place.

In a way, the film's narration is a cinematic comfort. It is a re-assurance, delivered both in a conversational glib and half poetics, that what we see on-screen isn't just witnessed by the fourth wall population that we are. Of course, it's adventurously insightful to see a film created out of a 'fly on the wall' perspective, but like De Niro's Sam Rothstein in Scorsese's "Casino", we need a distinct personality to somehow filter everything that occurs. And even though Buscape is neither special nor participatory in the film's crucial events, he is our bridge that leads us into the gang-overtaken, drug-financed urban mutation that is the 'Cidade de Deus' and the ever-investigative world of journalism (considering that he is an aspiring maverick photographer).

Analogically speaking, he is our Virgil into Ze' Pequeno's (Lil' Ze') (award-worthily played by non-actor Leandro Firmino) 'Inferno', and in this hell, there's no fires and brimstone but guns, trigger-happy fingers and lots of drugs. Now, for it being set in a repugnant slums and it being based on a true story, I think it's expected for those who still haven't seen the film to mention "uber realism" as its primary visual preference. But with its clever, stylish and fast-paced usage of flashback transitions and montages that are usually accompanied by percussive musics, it has elevated the film from being an excellently written crime film into a truly unforgettable representation of a modern masterpiece. One that shows violence through close range, observant eyes and redemption through distant but hopeful ones.

'Join in or die out'. that may ultimately be the clockwork maxim that runs through Lil' Ze' and other hoods' minds, but for Buscape' and, to a certain extent, Benny (Lil' Ze's best friend, played by Phellipe Haagensen), there's something in it for 'or', and it is worth a try.

"City of God", pitch-perfectly directed by Fernando Meirelles (who also directed the great "The Constant Gardener" and the quite abysmal "Blindness") and Katia Lund, does not condescend to the harsh realities of living the life of illegalities and crime. It criticizes, exposes and sometimes even understands, but it never looked upon the 'Cidade de Deus'' extreme alternative of a lifestyle with a fully raised eyebrow. I think the film concedes to its existence but never the pertinence of escape. With that, "City of God", albeit a transgressive facade, provides a slight relief.

FINAL RATING

Enter the Void (Gaspar Noe)

Existence in Tokyo in full, living (literally) color.

Gaspar Noe, an underground master auteur, continues his visceral exploration of raw human drama with "Enter the Void", an epic surrealist film with touches of the supernatural interspersed with unsettling colors and images going askew into a territory where despair is a way of life. Going as ambiguous as possible with the theme of 'incest' prevalent throughout the film, Noe combines the 'in-your-face' emotional gut wrench of "Irreversible" and the aforementioned theme in the psychologically disturbing "I Stand Alone".

With both approaches from these two previous films utilized, we have, in our hands, an assault to the senses that is also a dire though sweet cinematic discourse about sibling love paired with a bit of mental conflict.

The film was labeled as a 'Psychedelic Melodrama', which is of course an absolutely perfect description. But "Enter the Void" is also a perfect example of an experimental film made by a filmmaker with an imagination going through constant permutations. Its story concerns that of a deceased drug dealer named Oscar (played by new-comer Nathaniel Brown) and his transcendent observation of his sister's (played by Paz de la Huerta) life through transitions of fires and lights in the calmly transgressive night life in Tokyo.

Gaspar Noe already used reverse chronology, 'shock' filmmaking and continuous shots in his previous works. This time, he initially used first person point of view, then suddenly transforming into shots behind the protagonist's back. Not only does it provide a closer look into the film's degrading drama of sex and drugs, nor is it just a senselessly voyeuristic perception of the more sexually-charged sequences. It's also an emotional narrative device of how those people around the protagonist look to be too close to touch yet too far away to feel.

It's Oscar's sentiment; a feeling that could have been bastardized by over-exposition. But the film has captured it in a fairly simplistic manner by this unorthodox cinematic style that is also a product of an affluent dedication to the craft. Amidst the complex imagery and hovering eagle's viewpoint that explores the moody qualms of Tokyo, Japan, "Enter the Void" is also about an individual's alienation about those around him resulted by a stigmatic past and the endlessly agonizing consequences of unguided existence.

Films like these, although it may find a more positive general response from time to time, will always fall into two categorizations: Either be perceived as a pornographic exploitation wrapped in vibrant pretense or be particularly viewed as an essential piece of cinema. Either way, "Enter the Void" inspires divisiveness, which is what 'true' cinema is all about.

Modifying Truffaut, a film must either be about the joy or agony of making it. This film dealt with love and pain and strife and life. It grabs the middle ground and never lets go.

FINAL RATING

Winter's Bone (Debra Granik)

Ree in the woods.

With its "Brother's Keeper-like" 'squalor in the woods' visuals and the emotional and economic burden felt throughout the film that echoes that in "Frozen River", I knew that by looking upon those simple parallels, 'pace' is a tertiary concern. Jennifer Lawrence is very effective as the independent, though constantly puzzled female protagonist Ree, using every means to hold her family together, put food on the table, and keep their house from being taken away.

I have to admit that I have fully anticipated some big time plot revelations in the end, as what many films dealing with mysterious disappearances and murders often lead to. With that, "Winter's Bone" has been rather quite exceptional. Instead of focusing on 'whodunit' plot devices, the film's central theme is within the emotional arc and choices of Ree herself.

The sheriff came into their house and told her that his crank-cooking (illegal drug maker) father is a 'runner' from the law, with their house being considered as his 'bail bond'. "I will find him" is Ree's sole answer to the sheriff. With that response, the camera pans into her face. Conflicted, clueless, but ultimately decisive. She will set on to locate her father whatever it may take. But there enters the conflicting duality of her true goal: Is she really trying to look for her father because of the simple idea that he, beyond all that he has done, is still 'family'? Or is she going to find him solely for the reason that they can keep their house? There may be no one that would outright and unconditionally help her in her mission considering the helplessness of her two young siblings, a mother resigned from reality, and a husband-dominated best friend. Her extended family of criminal grotesqueries may even be in on all the troubles, and going into the military is not a way out.

Then there were sequences where Ree constantly looks upon her father's closet filled with his clothes, boots, and a banjo (signifying that she may have really loved her father after all). And then on the other end, she will never let their house let out of her grasp. It's a two-way complication, but one which she is more than willing to resolve. She's compelled, not by outer forces, but by an inner call for order and emotional complacency.

Based on a novel, but with the film's extreme subtlety (though there was a peculiar use of a framed black and white sequence of squirrels and trees being cut down) and constant stagnation, the prevention of it being a cinematic adaptation that may connote and recognize its source material's page-turning quality was the one that was ultimately achieved. Great performance by John Hawkes as Teardrop.

FINAL RATING