City of god

What is the importance of mise-en-scene and or sound in creating meaning and generating response in the films that you have studied?

I think that the mise-en-scene is really important in the film City of god. I think that the importance of mise-en-scene is apparent in one of the starting and ending scenes. in this scene it shows the character Lil-dice sat with the tender trio, Goose, Clipper and Shaggy, in this scene lil-dice is sat at the top of a pile of bricks this is an important aspect of the mise-en-scene because these bricks, to me, represent the building blocks to the city of god and because of Lil-dices positioning on these blocks it not only shows his power over the tender trio but also fore shadows what is going to come, that he will have the power over the city of god, also in this scene there is a lot of light and there is a clear sky, this could mean that there is hope for the future. Later in the film after his friend Benny dies, (his best friend and good influence) the mise-en-scene shows him with his back agains a wall made of the initial building blocks that he sat on, this shows meaning to me because it is almost like he is on top of the city ruling over it, but also means that he has completely turned his back on the City, like he doesn't really care about it anymore. The sky and the whole look of the film is an awful lot darker as well, this could mean that there isn't hope anymore and just shows the recurring motif that no matter what you do you can't escape from it.

Another scene that really emphasises the importance of mine-en-scene in this film is, "The story of the apartment." The beginning of this scene shows a very well furnished, well decorated apartment filled with food, owned by a woman,"Dona zelia" selling drugs to support her family at this time it was the early 60s when women had more power, there is a static camera used, i think that this is used to make the deterioration of the apartment more apparent, this montage sequence is the first one that you see in the film and because of its use of cross dissolves, i think that it was used to show the progression of time and shows you how long it takes for the apartment to deteriorate, later in the sequence there becomes less furniture, the wallpaper is replaced with nude posters of woman and instead of a bread knife on the cloth covered table, there is a meat cleaver sticking out of it, to me it just shows how quickly things can escalate in the city of god. Also in this scene you see the slow deterioration of domestication, to me it shows the animalistic nature of the people who live there, you can't domesticate a wild animal and as the take continues you can see the the people taking over get more and more malicious. I think that this scene in a way portrays what happens throughout the whole film, things slowly get worse and worse until it is almost unliveable.