what is the importance of mine-en-scene and/or sound increasing meaning and generating response in the films you have studied?
during the final scene of city of god we witness the death of lil Ze, the short build up to this moment has several moments of mine en scene that added weight to the sequence for me. For instance as melon head and the police lead lil Ze to the final moment we are shown a low key mid shot of lil Ze getting escorted with a concrete mesh behind him and this to me pointed out the darkness and the trapped sense that will follow as if to say that the moment of death is coming and there is now ay out of this and that perhaps mirrors the entire film in itself as throughout we are constantly shown that it is impossible to escape the city of god in one piece, we saw this in shaggy who was shot as they attempted to escape as well as goose and even benny. another moment that stood out during this scene was that everything from rockets Point of View was from behind this concrete cage as it were and this said to me that rocket was out, like he wasn't a part of the animals in the "zoo" who tear each other apart for scraps in that Lil Ze's business is literally scraps, he was just an innocent person looking into a cage. this idea as stated is shown when shaggy attempts to escape the city of god and is gunned down by the corrupt cops and as we watch his attempted escape through the log shot from within the car that watches shaggy weave in and out of the buildings before inevitably dying and it adds to the sense that another "innocent" person has to watch the guilty "animals" go through everything and then die however this perhaps in itself has a flip in that we see Denise "trapped" inside the car and so it could be saying that she's actually trapped in leaving the city because shell inevitably be dragged back into it and she actually is as later we see her with one of the drug lords that Lil Ze has to murder to take over.this then again is flipped on its head for goose as when he dies during his escape he's killed by another "animal" and so there isn't a cage in the way except for possibly the city boundaries themselves. this possibly adds to the message of futility that people are always killed right in the borderlands of their escape, goose on the city limits, benny on his leaving party and lil Ze to a degree as with his business almost non existent he could literally walk away but its his decision not to run that then gets him killed at the hands of the runts.
