OSCAR: It's always possible to pull out quotes from negative reviews to support a negative opinion (or vice versa), but in our effort to carry out a debate we're losing track of the fact that we were essentially in harmony about the movie a month ago and still are. You are firm in your opinions about the movie's limitations and I respect that. But please remember that my review is all about the technical accomplishment of the movie. It is this that we agreed on from the start: that Cidade de Deus excels and is brilliant technically, is a dazzling piece of filmmaking. I'm not trying to say it's a moral treatise. I just don't agree that it glorifies crime and violence when everybody but the narrator ends up in a pool of blood. As I said in my review, I don't think we need to be told that the state of affairs the movie depicts is undesirable. I don't agree with you that it's pure gangster genre, when it is so specific and unique in the world it depicts. You are right that the boys' view of violence, or their view of the gang life, permeates the movie, but you are twisting things when you say that Rocket is "one of the boys," because he only briefly dabbles in crime, and his aim from the beginning is to be a photographer. What other boy has any other aim besides dealing drugs? Only Rocket, and he is the narrator. His "p.o.v." is not the universal gangster one as you imply. His is the "p.o.v." of someone who sought to get out, who did get out, and who is narrating the story from a position outside the world he grew up in. This is exactly what you say he isn't doing. You can think the movie amoral if you like. You're not alone. What I think is more important in a film is whether we can care about the people when so many get killed and it all happens so fast. Some critics, such as Anthony Lane of The New Yorker, doubt that we can. I think we can; but we have to tune in, and I think we need to see the movie multiple times to do so. I asked about The Battle of Algiers. I would ask about Goodfellas. It has a scene in it that to me is more repugnant than anything in Cidade de Deus. Goodfellas to me is a repugnant movie. I find Cidade de Deus warm and full of life, Goodfellas cold, cynical, and ugly. Scorsese is a brilliant auteur but his work is cold and ugly. Strange though it may seem, Cidade de Deus is an affirmation of life. What about Pulp Fiction? Is that repugnant and amoral? No, it's fun. But of course, Cidade de Deus is based on fact, and Pulp Fiction is all a game. It is perhaps because of Cidade de Deus' claim to factuality that people are disturbed by it. But that is also another reason, in my view, why it is not ultimately a glorification of violence: because it's about real people, and therefore their violent ends are sad.

It's not my opinion but simply what I've read that in the last decade violence in the favela of Cidade de Deus has been quelled, but I've also read, in Roger Ebert's review, about the new president of Brazil hailing the movie as a valuable warning. So I don't think these are just things that it's nice to say if you want to claim something for the movie. Your theory that its being historical and not contemporaneous, because it ends well before the present, is a way of opting out of moral judgment, seems to me far-fetched.

You agree that this is a remarkable piece of filmmaking, but you balk when anyone says it's a masterpiece. Fine. I am not saying it's a masterpiece. That's a word I'm very stingy with. I really don't think we're so much in disagreement. These are quibbles. The Thread format is leading us astray: I say something, and you're asked to reply: "What do you say to this!?" You reply, and I'm asked to volley something back. I know we have much in common in our cinematic tastes, but of course we aren't going to agree 100%. I don't want to try to convince you of the total validity of my point of view, and you're not going to convince me that the movie is morally repugnant--not when the president of Brazil thinks all Brazilians should see it. Let's just respect each other's views and agree to disagree, while agreeing that our evaluations of the movie's worth are pretty similar. When you first commented on Cidade de Deus, I hailed your remarks with great respect.