The Life of Others: Slumming for Thrills

A few years ago, City of God (Cidade de Deus) burst over the international filmscape with its portrayal of the feral – and undeniably vital - beats of Rio de Janeiro’s slum life. The lower depths, as it were, of Brazilian society, where survival politics is rendered in bloody hues. Hues that collaterally tinge urban society as a whole.  Life is cheap, arbitrary, a local saying goes. The unmitigated violence it presented to the world was nothing new in itself. Scorcese and Tarantino, for instance, had more than paved the way for ... more