Cidade de Deus (City of God) is one of those films that has been on my ’should watch’ list for ages. It’s been sitting in my cupboard for about four months, always getting pushed aside when there was something else (usually something more trashy) taking priority. Anyhow, last night we sat down with a bottle of wine, slipped it into the DVD player and watched.

And I’m very glad we did.

Yes, it’s violent. Yes, it’s noisy. Yes, it’s in Portuguese. But it pulls you along at a terrific rate and the violence, tough and non-stop though it may be, does quickly become secondary to the plot as you follow the (true) story of the drug dealers living in a Rio de Janeiro slum called the Cidade de Deus.

It is many stories rolled into one, but primarily those of Knockout Ned’s corruption and transformation from a good looking straight-down-the-line kind of guy a to dead criminal, and of Rocket, the narrator, who grows up to be a photographer for the local paper and so escapes the slum.

The filming technique is almost as ingenious as the way they have wrapped the story around itself. It makes for very uncomfortable viewing, though, not least because of the police corruption. They appear to be as bad as the drug lords, and seemingly are easily bought off.

That is not nearly such painful viewing as the one scene I almost couldn’t watch, where the dealers had lined up two small, screaming kids against a wall, given a gun to another one and forced him to choose one or the other and shoot him dead. The camera seems to linger forever as he makes up his mind, and all the while you’re praying that it will just subtly pan away and save you from watching what might happen next. Fortunately it is obscured by someone’s head by the time the bullet is fired, but the joyous reaction from the infant school-aged killer is enough to turn your stomach.

I don’t think we said a single word from the moment it began until the end credits started to roll two and a bit hours later. We were captivated by a foreign film that was so not like the kind of thing we would ever choose to watch.

I can see precisely why it has been so highly praised. It is difficult viewing, but should be seen by all. The Empire critics chose it as their film of the year. IMDB readers rated it the 18th best film of all time.

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