From the slums to the red carpet

It's a rare occurrence when a movie made almost two years ago is suddenly nominated for an Oscar. But it's even rarer when the movie in question, a Brazilian film with hardly a word of English in it, is nominated for almost every major Academy award except Best Foreign Film.

City of God's rise from total obscurity to a burgeoning hit is nearly as convoluted as its narrative of underworld crime in a Rio de Janeiro slum. Brazilian filmmakers decided not to enter the film as their official selection for the 2003 Academy Awards, making it ineligible for a Best Foreign Film Oscar. Luckily, "independent" moviemakers/"highbrow" Oscar-factory, Miramax, stepped in to release the film domestically, giving the fine folks at the Academy the opportunity to shower it with accolades like any other homegrown spool of celluloid.

However, whether it came from a sudden flash of pre-Oscar hype or the leisurely word of mouth that tends to follow a revered cult film, City of God was bound to catch on in America before long. From its kinetic visuals to its violent "Hey kids, crime doesn't pay but it sure is fun to watch"-intertwining storylines, City, despite its foreign origins, will hold its own against any hyper real Tarantino-knockoff at the local multiplex.

Told from the point of view of Rocket -- about the only character in the movie who manages to shirk the life of a gangster -- City of God is the story of a low-income district in Rio of the same name. The film begins in a 1960s where the light always appears sepia and the houses neat and orderly, and ends in the 1980s when the City of God has degenerated into a gloomy, neon-colored war-zone.

The physical erosion of the city itself closely parallels the rise in violent crime and drug activity on its streets. When the film begins, the only criminals operating in the City of God are three inept hoodlums who rob gas trucks and throw money to the poor. By the 1970s, a blossoming drug trade has split the slum into two rival gangs, causing crime to become an altogether more serious, and hazardous, endeavor.

But the film is much more than a simple cautionary tale about the dangers of gang life. City of God has about as much to do with drugs and gangs as Robert Altman's Nashville has to do with country music: both are more concerned with how something like music or crime connects the lives of the strangest people.

At its most sprawling, City of God's spider-web of interconnected stories feels as if Gabriel Garcia Marquez rewrote the script to Scarface. There is a plethora of interesting characters wandering rampant through the underworld.

Director Fernando Meirelles with screenwriter Braulio Mantovani fill their movie with every minute detail concerning the characters' lives. There's the cold-blooded gang leader Lil Ze, who's the most feared man in the city but can't get a woman to dance with him; his sidekick, Benny, a much-beloved hippy who wants to turn away from his life of crime to live on a farm; Ned, a genuinely nice guy who's dragged into the gang war when his brother is killed; and Rocket himself, a photographer and would-be thief who finds his potential victims too cool to rob.

The broad palette of stories is the movie's strongest feature, a feature that any director would be hard-pressed to emulate. The film's foreign origins might have made its trip to the USA a little longer, but they don't diminish its appeal to American audiences.