What is the importance of mine-en-scene and/or sound in creating meaning and generating response in 'City of God'?

When the Tender Trio and Li'l Dice are sitting around before the motel hold-up, they are shown firstly as part of the background through wires and the bars of cages in the foreground of the shot. This suggests that even though they have power inside the Favelas, they are trapped there and are unable to leave due to their social situation and are left with no power in the real world outside of their ‘hood’ nature. When the group come into focus, they are sitting on a large pile of bricks. These bricks would have been used to make new parts of the favela as each one usually held around 30,000 people. This use of mise-en-scene shows that the attitudes of these young people, especially Li’l Dice, would become the building blocks to the society that the Brazilian people would come to know and would therefore be passed on through generations. Furthermore, Li’l Dice is sat higher up on the bricks than the members of the Tender Trio, placing him in the more dominant position in the group and therefore giving him power over them. This mise-en-scene creates a very unusual situation inside the Favelas as the younger children were often given very low ranking roles in hood plans and drug deals, allowing room to move up the hierarchy as they grew older. Therefore, this use of mise-en-scene could be seen as foreshadowing the fact that Li’l Dice moves on to take the Tender Trio’s place as the leader and most dangerous person in the City of God. Whilst they are talking to each other, Li’l Dice picks up a gun that one of the tender trio has left on the bricks and points it at Goose’s head before they knock it out of his hands. This mise-en-scene of Li’l Dice being so eager to pick up a gun shows the culture that they live in, as in the Favelas people who are involved with the drug trade have a life expectancy of 14 to 25 years with many young people carrying guns round themselves. This could also be used to foreshadow the fact that Li’l Dice ends up shooting Goose when he tries to escape the Favela with some of the money that Li’l Dice earned from the motel heist, further proving both that Li’l Dice becomes the most dangerous criminal in the City of God and that it is impossible to leave the Favelas.

After the robbery at the motel, Shaggy to Maracena and Bernice’s house to seek shelter from the police. When he is explaining the situation to Maracena, Bernice enters and lights a candle giving the following shots a soft amber glow, which makes them seem almost dreamlike, as in the Favelas and any Urban Stories it is very difficult to form and maintain romantic alliances, making any chances that they may be presented with seem like a far off dream rather than reality. This is followed by shot reverse shot of Bernice and Shaggy sharing stares accompanied by very slow, romantic non-diegetic music. This combination of performance mise-en-scene, sound and editing is very suggestive of a romantic connection between these two characters. However, when Maracena begins talking to Shaggy again, the music stops abruptly, thus breaking the connection between Shaggy and Bernice. This use of sound clearly shows that Maracena has broken Shaggy away from his dream state and has brought him back to the situation he is in, due to his lifestyle as a ‘hood’, back to the reality of living in the Favelas and the trouble that causes for them all. This further shows the difficulty of forming romantic alliances in the situations of Urban stories as there is always something standing in the way, in this case the obstacle being Bernice’s mother and Shaggy’s ‘hood’ nature.