City Of God Opening Sequence Analysis

The opening sequence starts out with with a series of frantic, quick, close ups of a knife being sharpened and chickens being killed in the process of making a meal. As this happens, shots of a confused chicken watching on in terror are shown and the chicken decides to escape. These first few cuts set the violent tone of the film and place us into its world. The sharpening of the knives connotes violence and death, while the escape of the chicken is used to represent an attempted escape from the impoverished Favelas. The happy, upbeat diegetic music, juxtaposed with the shots of violence and look of fear on the chicken's face and the sound of the knife being sharpened, could perhaps have been done in an attempt to show the differences in experience between the rich and the poor in Brazil.

The chicken then leaps from a ledge and lands on the street and the music cuts to silence on a shot of a bowl of blood: this is noticed by a group of poverty stricken teenagers brandishing guns who then begin to chase the chicken with the intent on killing it and the music starts up again. As they chase it through the streets, we're shown more of the neighbourhood which is in disarray- the streets are covered in litter and the walls are covered in graffiti- this shows us that these boys are not living in a rich neighbourhood. We're then shown a low shot at the eye level view of the chicken evading the boys, which makes us feel like we are the chicken which is running for its life, we then cut to a shot of the chase of the chicken from behind (the perspective of the boys) which furthers the idea that the escape of the chicken is a metaphor for an escape from poverty and also gives us the feeling of life in the Favelas being a race with the risk of death. Next, we cut to a shot of two boys speaking (clearly the protagonists) about risking death to get a good photo with the reward of getting a job at a newspaper: this furthers the idea of a race to escape poverty with the risk of death.  In the pursuit a man is assaulted and threatened with a gun and gunshots are fired- this is when the fun and games stop and the danger begins to feel real.

The chicken then reaches a street and, in the midst of the chaos, a police car passes, notices the violence of the chase and stops at the end of the road; the protagonists now also reach the street. One of the protagonists then mentions that a man named 'Lil Ze' will kill him if he finds him and then the boys (assumedly with Lil Ze) arrive on the street and the protagonist freezes. Now the protagonist and the chicken are stuck in a standoff between the boys and the approaching police. The protagonist then freezes and and a 360 degree shot is shown of his surroundings and now both him and the viewer are aware of the mortal dangers that he's in. The protagonist and the chicken are both in the same situation both physically and metaphorically and this is furthered by the narrator's dialogue which says; 'If you run away, they get you and if you stay, they get you too'. The 360 degree shot then resumes and we are brought back to the protagonist's childhood in the sixties.