This comes as a surprise to even myself sometimes, but I do actually have a heart. Puppies don’t make me all soft in the middle, the plight of the common man doesn’t move me in the slightest. But, when I stop to consider the amount of poverty on this planet, I get a little sick. I live an incredibly comfortable lifestyle by most standards. I can afford my own things and a five dollar cup of coffee several times a day. I pass by homeless people every day with nothing, but I rarely dwell on it. But what has never ceased to amaze me are people who scrape together a life in slums that are larger than Manhattan. The idea that anyone could survive in that environment is absolutely astounding to me. It should comes as no surprise that most people would fear visiting such an environment, and it can easily be said that most people’s worst fear would be to have to live in someplace like the slums in Fernando Meirelles’ new television series City of Men.
Meirelles was the brilliant director behind last year’s City of God. City of God ingeniously told the story of a boy’s survival in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, and this new series covers similar territory. Like the movie that this series was spun off from, City of Men is equal parts drama, character study and documentary. The show began airing on the Sundance Channel at 9:00 PM EST on Tuesdays.
The first episode of the series, ‘The Emperor’s Crown’ follows the misadventures of two black children who want to go on field trip with their class if they can raise the money to go. The two children are Acerola and Laranjinha. While Laranjinha knows he can easily get the money from his grandmother. She agrees to give him the change if he promises to bring her medicine from a pharmacy. Acerola, on the other hand, figures he must con his mother’s boss into giving him the money for the trip. Things work out well for both children until Acerola is mugged. Laranjinha comes up with a simple solution. He will loan his grandmother’s medicine money to Acerola, and then to replace that man, Laranjinha will go to a local drug general to retrieve the money and rat out the muggers.
As you can tell, this isn’t a typical family drama. Filmed on location in real slums using children who are actual residents, the production is coated with the film and despair of real people and real problems. Amazingly, while showing the rough and tumble lives of these children, viewers come away with a sense of hope for the endearing leads because of their creativity, sensitivity and intelligence. They live in a war zone for all intents and purposes, and they have figured out a means to survive under the most terrible of circumstances. When Laranjinha eventually does go to the drug lord, he hilariously exaggerates his friends mugging, describing the unorganized bullies as soldiers from a rival gang. His few minutes with the drug dealers leads to a skirmish that basically closes down the slums making it difficult to get the medicine back to his grandmother.
The show is filled with subtleties like that. When Acerola is initially mugged, he is roughed up somewhat, but what really causes him heart ache is when a cheap plastic ruler given to him by his mother is smashed under the foot of on of the attackers. Seeing him shed tears over something that would not cost $.25 is absolutely heartbreaking.
The show appears to be filmed using handheld cameras, both digital and film, and then in post colorful animations are added to either emphasize the leads creativity and inner dialog or to illuminate the world in which they live. The results are nothing short of astounding. But it’s not just a glossy production that manages to move me. Meirelles actually crafts a compelling story which draw parallels from Napoleon’s war with England and the politic struggles that the children face every day when they walk home from school.
It’s encouraging that Sundance would help promote such a story and I am anxious to see if the series holds the same surprises as the original film. I implore you to watch this if you have access. It’s not often that we get to see the seedy underbelly of life in a Third World slum, and while the show can be difficult to watch, it’s an interesting spotlight into what mankind of capable of, both base and triumphant.
