City of God currently edges The Pursuit of Happyness 54–46

The Verdict

Meirelles films the favela like it has its own pulse: the camera chasing through alleys, the decade-spanning narrative that shows how the drug economy produces its leaders and disposes of them, children growing into the violence that was waiting for them before they were born. Muccino films poverty as one man's gauntlet: Smith carrying everything alone, the shelter, the bathroom, the internship where no one knows he's homeless. The narrow lead for City of God suggests the systemic approach resonates more than the individual one, but Smith's performance is clearly connecting. Two radically different frameworks for the same subject, and the one that refuses to offer a solution is edging the one built around earning one.