City of God

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

In the film City of God, mise-en-scene is important because it can not only give clues on the narrative it also gives some contextual information. In the scene near the beginning, where lil' Dice and the tender trio are sitting on some bricks. The bricks represent the foundations the future of City which it will be built on. Now because the Tender trio and lil' Dice are smoking Pot and are holding guns, which mies-en-scene is setting an ideology of the foundations that the City of God is supported by drugs and violence, so we get the impression that later on we can expect the City to become very violent and aggressive and drugs would play a big part in the Cities financial situation. Also sitting higher up on the bricks is lil' Dice, this shows a mile-en-scene of a hierarchy of power with Lil' Dice at the top showing that he is going to be the powerful one, he will eventually rise to power and be above Shaggy, Clipper and Goose. Lil' dice in this scene is shown as the one who is dominant not just because he is placed in a higher position, he is also the one with the gun, a weapon which gives a person power, the gun gives Lil' Dice some stature but is taken away by Goose when, Goose hits him and takes away the gun at the beginning of the scene. This reminds Lil' Dice that he isn't as powerful because he is a kid and he doesn't like that, you can tell by his facial expression and the way that he tells them that he is a "gangster too". In this scene there is a shot where the characters are being shown through some metal bars, this represents a cage, that all of them are trapped in a cage and this is mise-en-scene of everyone who lives in the City of God is trapped and un able to escape because as a recurring motif throughout the film is that anyone who lives in the Favelas can't leave, they can try but it never works. The bricks are also miss-en-scene of being trapped in the same situation, because the bricks represent what the city is going to become, the people who live in the Favelas would get sucked into the drugs and violence and become further trapped and because nothing ever changes it becomes a repeated cycle, as the tender trio commit crimes, then Lil' Dice will follow in their lead and then someone else would follow Lil' Dice and it will keep on repeating in this cycle, because nothing ever changes and the foundations stay the same.

Mies-En-Scene importance is also shown in the story of the apartment. To show the history of the apartment they put in a cross devolve showing that the film is going through time, into a montage of the apartment owners. Thought he cross dissolve you can see how the apartment has degraded over time, this is mine-en-scene of how drugs can degrade and ruin people and places. It starts by going back and showing that a woman called Dona Zelia in the 60's when women had more power. The next owner of the apartment, who took it from Donawas a male and so where the ones who followed, this is mise-en-scene of how in the 60's women were more powerful but as time went on the power change over to the men. In the Favelas of Brazil, drugs are very common and thousands of people are involved with the business of them, this is also a reason why life expectancy is so low, it is between 14 and 26 is the lifespan of someone living the the Favelas because of the danger, like later on in this scene when Carrot shoots Aristotle, Carrot didn't have much of a choice he was put in a kill or be killed position d that is what it is like in everyday life in the City of God. This scene also shows that in the slums of Brazil that most people are in the drug trade like in the film as the average pay is around $13 but in the drug trade you can make about $300 a week and the drug trade is easier to get into because like most people in the Favelas you don't have to be educated.