Vermiglio

 

Writer/director Maura Delpero

Delpero with the Silver Lion at Venice

The director on the set

VERMIGLIO                         B                                                                                               Italy  France  Belgium  (119 mi)  2024  d: Maura Delpero

My father left us one summer afternoon. Before closing them forever, he looked at us with the big, amazed eyes of a child. I had already heard that when you get older you become a little child again, but I didn’t know that those two ages could merge into a single face. In the months that followed, he came to visit me in a dream. He had returned to his childhood home, in Vermiglio. He was six years old and had a toothless smile and the legs of a mountain goat and was carrying this film under his arm: four seasons in the life of his large family. A story of children and adults, amongst deaths and births, disappointments and rebirths, of their holding each other tight in the turns of life, and out of a community growing into individuals. Of the smell of wood and warm milk on freezing mornings. With the distant and ever-present war, experienced by those who remained outside the great machine: the mothers who watched the world from a kitchen, with newborns dying because of blankets that were too short, the women who feared they were already widows, the farmers who waited for children who never returned, the teachers and priests who replaced the fathers. A story of war without bombs, or great battles. In the uncompromising logic of the mountain that every day reminds man how small he is. 

Vermiglio is a landscape of the soul, a “family saying” that lives inside me, on the threshold of the unconscious, an act of love for my father, his family and their small village. Travelling through a personal time, it wants to pay homage to a collective memory.

—Maura Delpero, Director’s Statement, VERMIGLIO

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize (2nd Place) at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, while also winning the Best Film in the feature film competition at the Chicago Film Festival (Festival Award Winners - Cinema Chicago), and even shortlisted for the Best International Feature at the Academy Awards, but failed to make the final cut, so this film is critically acclaimed, but sluggishly paced and only mildly engaging, where it feels overly drawn out, with a novelesque sweep of too many characters that can be challenging, yet the remote location in the Italian Alps is breathtaking.  Written, directed, and produced by Maura Delpero, an Italian director who studied literature both in Italy and France before shifting gears to study film at the Professional Training Center of SICA in Buenos Aires, making several documentaries before releasing her first feature, MATERNAL (2019), inspired by her own experiences as a teacher in Argentina.  This is another intensely personal project, creating a family portrait inspired by her own experiences, yet enlarged, becoming a collective memory movie.  Not nearly as successful as Sarah Polley’s collective voices drama, 2023 Top Ten List #1 Women Talking, which utilizes a similar technique, but Polley’s characters are more fully formed, each one readily identified by viewers, creating substantially greater dramatic impact that this more subdued film lacks.  Part of it is the source material, as Polley drew from a novel by Miriam Toews that features almost exclusively women, described by the novelist as “an imagined response to real events,” where their agenda is clearly recognizable and heartfelt.  This feels more muddled, rather dark and pessimistic, harder to follow, where not much actually happens, as it’s more of a quietly subtle, observational movie, almost like a documentary, inspired by a love for the cinematic poetry of Ermanno Olmi (more in spirit than his directorial style), whose looming presence permeates throughout, capturing the experience of work and family, where his films are full of life and dignity, drawing inspiration from his Catholic faith, and can be viewed as simplicity itself, expressed through humor and grace.  Perhaps a throwback to Luchino Visconti’s THE LEOPARD (1963), or even Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon (Das Weiße Band – Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte) (2009), with children prominently in the foreground, also reminiscent of Thomas Hardy novels and their film adaptations, like Michael Winterbottom’s JUDE (1996) or Thomas Vinterberg’s Far From the Madding Crowd (2015), this historical drama is set in a remote location in the mountains with just a few hundred inhabitants near the end of WWII in 1944.  Shot in the Italian neorealist mode with a mostly non-professional cast, the cinematography is a canvas of still life, with a predilection for fixed shots, providing not only insight into the everyday routine, but a static lens observing the tension between tradition and change, between the natural cycle of the changing seasons, and the transformations imposed by the war, filled with quiet moments, disappointments, and the everlasting bonds of family.  Without a trace of sentimentality, there is room for pauses and silences, which become as eloquent as the dialogues, as traces of war linger long after the war ended, upending the social fabric, leading to unemployment and poverty, affecting a significant part of society, which led to the birth of Italian neorealism.  Outside of food shortages and conversational references, along with occasional planes flying overhead, there are no war references, no battles, no bombs exploding, and no graphic violence, as this could be happening at any point in history and the village would function primarily the same, giving the film a timelessness that goes beyond the borders, as it’s more of a time capsule of the living, characterized by long takes and sparse dialogue, where the pace is slow and deliberate, the drama understated, and the silences can feel oppressive.            

Certainly not lacking in ambition, as this film stakes out its claim into largely untold territory, effectively highlighting how many ingrained prejudices and injustices toward women follow us from generation to generation, painting a predominately picturesque portrait of the price we pay, even among our families.  Primary schoolmaster Cesare Graziadei (Tommaso Ragno) and his wife Adele (Roberta Rovelli) have a sprawling family with eight children, and she’s pregnant again.  The older children in their late teens are Lucia (Martina Scrinzi), who embodies the transition from adolescence to adulthood in a world that demands conformity, and her somewhat slacker brother Dino (Patrick Gardner), clearly disillusioned by the idea of being relegated to a life as a common laborer, yet neither can complete their schooling due to the war.  The relentlessly curious Ada (Rachele Potrich) is around fourteen, one of the older students in her father’s schoolhouse, who hides a rebellious streak, while his pet favorite, the more studious Flavia (Anna Thaler), a voracious reader, is eleven.  There are also three younger boys and a baby, with the five oldest sharing two beds in a single bedroom.  There is no electricity in the village, and no indoor plumbing, so the living situation is rustic, where each day begins with the milking of the cows, as a handful of warmed, freshly gathered milk is carefully poured into the bowls of each child as they gather around the table.  Due to the cramped living quarters, no one has any privacy, so individual family members lock themselves into rooms when no one is looking, hide behind corners, or linger in the empty barn, just to have some time to themselves.  For the most part, the film follows three young women, Ada, Lucia, and Flavia, seen chattering among themselves in bed at night, archetypes in a search for emancipation, who move between the bonds of a patriarchal society and their desires for freedom, in a community very enclosed in itself, where the past is always present and where fate is marked by roads already assigned to each.  While there’s not really a story, per se, the film is framed around the interactions between the family and the neighboring community, told in brief vignettes, almost like a family photo album, as their daily routines come to life as they confront teen angst, forbidden desires, infant mortality, and WWII-era deprivation, often resorting to the rosary for their moral transgressions.  Also in the home is Adele’s widowed sister Cesira (Orietta Notari), who is secretly sheltering her son Attilio (Santiago Fondevila) out in the barn along with his illiterate friend Pietro (Giuseppe De Domenico), having brought a wounded and shell-shocked son back home, both fugitives, as they deserted from forced army service under the Nazis, known by the entire village that they are kept hidden, yet they join the family at church every Sunday.  No one stands up to the strict and rigid patriarch Cesare, whose influential position of authority is unchallenged, touching the lives of everyone, bringing education and culture to a region that couldn’t be more isolated, far removed from the rest of the world.  Adele questions her husband’s spending on a phonograph record, believing that money could be better spent on food (“It is food for the soul,” he retorts), but part of the pattern of life is hearing what he listens to intently in his study, including Vivaldi’s ebullient The Four Seasons Concerto No. 2 'Summer' - Allegro non ... YouTube (10:22), which he plays in his classroom, pointing out the intruding sounds of nature, specifically the way the composer uses music to mimic the sounds of birds, yet also the more ponderous reserve of a Chopin Nocturne, Arthur Rubinstein - Chopin Nocturne Op. 9, No. 1 in B flat YouTube (5:27).

Moving from season to season, this rhythm of life story revolves around the budding love affair of Lucia and the Sicilian army deserter Pietro, who are watched carefully by her younger sisters, culminating in their celebratory wedding, where the open-air festivities surrounded by the massive expanse of the Dolomites looming in the background is an extended spectacle, shot in stunning natural light by Mikhail Krichman, the renowned cinematographer of Andrey Zvyagintsev, featuring plenty of food and dancing to the rudimentary sounds of local musicians that make everything feel suspended in time.  It’s fair to say that Pietro may be the least developed character, where a distinct perspective shifts to that of Lucia after the end of the war, as Pietro goes away to visit his family in Sicily and mysteriously disappears, leaving a terrible void in his absence.  Instead the focus is on the influence and authoritative rule of Cesare, a complex character with considerable intellect and a talent for teaching, perhaps the only educated figure in the region, seen taking the kids on long walks into the forest, where in addition to teaching the grade school kids he runs an adult literacy class in the evenings, but despite his love for classical music and literature, he is emotionally distanced from the people around him, where his biggest flaw may be emotional neglect, particularly to those closest to him.  The most well-rounded portrait may be that of Ada, torn between faith and desire, and possibly queer, full of interior conflicts, where much of this world is seen through her prying eyes, tempted by her own desires and discoveries, like sharing private moments with her more assertively bold and “bad influence” friend Virginia (Carlotta Gamba), who likes to wear makeup and is typically seen smoking a cigarette in the barn, or sneaking a peek of erotica photographs kept hidden in her father’s desk, disappointed that he thinks she is underserving of any continuing education, saving that for Flavia alone, who is chosen to be sent away to boarding school in the city, leaving Ada’s options for the future extremely limited.  “Nothing’s special about me,” she confesses in church.  Based on the economic pressures of getting by, the parents can’t afford to send all the children on to further their education, and have to decide who among their daughters shows the most promise for school, and who is better suited to be a housewife, archaic rules that have been handed down for centuries.  The different ages of the sisters embody a different evolution of female desire, one adopting marriage and children, while another exhibits a curiosity about the different paths women may follow, even exploring other possible forms of love, while the youngest sister represents the future, including the possibility of adopting a more modern outlook that may counter tradition, possibly the only one of the sisters who will end up coming out of that suffocating everyday life.  With that in mind, Flavia may be the stand-in for the director, recalling many of her own memories (her father was from this same village, the youngest of a family with ten kids), visually embracing the female characters in their struggles, offering a feminist commentary on how women are trapped in traditional roles in such an unchanging patriarchal society, where the moral fabric of the entire community is formed by women who almost never leave their kitchens.  Extending beyond a war drama, this is something of a meditation on the ability to cope with events and the need to redefine oneself in the face of the challenges of life.  Exploring the fragile balance between collective memory and personal identity, Delpero has created a reminder of what it means to grow up in a small village, where family is the connecting glue, as no single character’s story is elevated over any others, and the film is less the narrative of an individual or couple than that of a collective, speaking a strange local dialect that must be translated to Italian, even playing with subtitles in Italian theaters.  One constant heard throughout is the relentless sound of baby noises, from just stirring around, yet also fussing and crying uncontrollably, often accompanied by a mother cooing or singing softly.  After the movie closes, we are left with the sounds of the village which can still be heard throughout the entirety of the end credits. 

Maura Delpero’s Closet Picks  Criterion selections on YouTube (3:36)

The Return (Vozvrashchenie)

 

 

THE RETURN (Vozvrashchenie)                  A                                                                              Russia  (106 mi)  2003  d:  Andrei Zvyagintsev

Why did you come back?  Why?  Why did you come get us?  You don’t need us.  We were fine without you, with Mom and Gran.  Why did you come back?  Why did you take us with you? What do you need us for?                    —Vanya (Ivan Dobronravov)

Described by this first time director as “a mythological look at human life,” this is one of the more starkly austere and emotionally spare films one could see, completely absent of anything unnecessary, but always direct and to the point, given metaphysical implications, reminiscent of an earlier, somewhat similar film, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s DISTANT (Uzak) (2002) that accentuates an excruciating loneliness, as the feelings in this film are so grim and remote, like a poetic glimpse into the human soul.  Remarkable for its spare storytelling that relies upon long, wordless sequences, the beauty of its stark reality is shockingly emphasized, like a Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness journey into the unknown, where one comes face to face with their ultimate fears.  What’s also surprising is the amount of unanswered questions raised by this film, which remain unresolved mysteries through the end, deeply entrenched in a primal ambiguity.  Structured into a series of episodes, the film marks seven days, each identified by intertitles, beginning with the introduction of two young brothers, Andrei (Vladimir Garin) and Vanya (Ivan Dobronravov), ages 15 and 13, who bicker and fight, like brothers do, but they’re also symbiotically attached, cut from the same cloth, demonstrating an intense closeness.  An early scene shows a group of young boys jumping off a tower into the sea, calling anyone who can’t do it a coward, so all but the youngest succeed, leaving Vanya temporarily stranded atop the tower, unable to face his fears.  Hours later his mother (Natalia Vdovina) climbs up there to console her child shivering in the cold, offering maternal grace and a warm blanket, suggesting he’ll jump when he’s ready, reassuring him that everything’s all right.  But the kids tease him when they see him again, excluding him from their playful activities.  Offering something of a diversion, Andrei races him home, each ready to tell on the other, but their mother quiets them, as their father (Konstantin Lavronenko), absent for 12 years, has inexplicably returned, sleeping in their mother’s bed in an identical position of Andrea Mantegna’s 15^th century painting, The Lamentation of a Dead Christ, Lamentation by Andrea Mantegna.  The boys are struck by his physical presence before running upstairs to confirm his identity, viewing a photograph kept in an illustrated family Bible, known by only a single photograph.  This simple gesture has a way of aligning the two boys even closer, as they’ve been together through all the years the father was absent, both a bit stupefied by his presence.  Their mother offers them no clues.  Again, without any explanation, he takes the boys on a journey, presumably a fishing trip, where they slip further and further away from civilization, into the most remote wilderness, eventually landing on a desolate island where they pitch their tents.  The older brother is glad his father has returned, while the younger brother isn’t even sure if this is his father or not, thinking he may be leading them astray to slit their throats, for all he knows, and sulks and disobeys his father every chance he gets.  This father uses few words, but offers severe and sometimes brutal consequences for disobedient behavior, which includes smacking these kids around, bloodying their noses, leaving them out in the rain, which makes them wonder why he’s returned at all.  But they’re so used to his absence that they continue to ignore him even when he’s present, seeing him as little more than a stranger.  Their rebellion leads to a sort of LORD OF THE FLIES mentality, as if they don’t adhere to his rule, then they’re really turning their backs on all rules, which leaves them in a precarious position.  It appears to be no accident that the younger child actor is named after the child hero in Tarkovsky’s Ivan's Childhood (1962), with both facing their own individual perils, where the innocence of youth is cut short, while the older child is named after Tarkovsky’s second film ANDREI RUBLEV (1966).     

In the spirit of The Decalogue (Dekalog) (1988-89), with echoes of Abraham and Isaac (Impossible Ethics: A Response to the Sacrifice of Isaac ...), the tension between father and sons builds continually throughout the journey, introducing Oedipal themes, exuding a heightened sense of reality, augmented by a dirgelike soundtrack that only accentuates the emotional and psychic distance between them, where Vanya is the moody core of the story, refusing to play along, angry and irritated at being ordered around by a total stranger, spending much of the picture sulking alone, silently.  His father’s response is harsh and at times cruel, an enigmatic and tortuous Stalin figure, leaving Vanya on the side of the road and driving off for hours at a time, forcing him to endure endless hours of pelting rain in the cold.  His absence is never discussed, no questions about his past are ever asked, and little, if any emotion is ever exhibited by the father.  His behavior is bewildering, yet the children offer unbelievably authentic performances.  While Russia historically is a patriarchal society, despite being called the Motherland, Russian films, including those of Tarkovsky, often reflect absent fathers and nurturing mothers, while also using recurring symbols of water and rain, natural forces of eternity that may also reflect a cleansing of one’s sins.  There is a morality tale at play here, as the children are constantly questioning the authority of their father, which may as well be a question for the nation, having endured a long history of brutal dictators, a brief hint of democracy, but then a return back to the rule of despots with Putin.  Using heavy force and humiliation, the father attempts to teach his sons hard corps discipline, military style, fueling speculation that he may have been in the military, but also survival techniques out in the woods, taking them on a long and arduous journey driving an 80’s GAZ Volga Stationwagon before traveling by boat, eventually reaching a remote, completely uninhabited island.  While they have a burning curiosity about him, wondering where he has been, why he has come back, how he has been spending his time, viewing him as a terrifying figure that they have every intention to love, but there are continual interruptions en route, with their father making inexplicable phone calls, presumably to some mistress nearby, but we never really know.  The boys grow tired of being ordered around, becoming more and more defiant over time, with Vanya eventually learning to despise him, extremely suspicious of his motives, having little use for him, feeling more liberated without him.  The stunning cinematography is by Mikhail Krichman, who would go on to shoot all of the director’s films, whose slow panning offers a strong sense of foreboding, given extraordinary weight, meticulously establishing the mood, capturing the natural beauty in the landscape with long, unbroken silences, while often changing focus several times within the same shot, given the artistic complexity of a Tarkovsky film, where the final shot actually resembles the final shot of MIRROR (1975), as does an earlier shot of the mother smoking on the porch during the unexpected arrival of the absent father, with a strikingly original soundtrack adding considerable depth, setting an atmospheric tone.  Resembling Bergman films shot on Fårö Island, offering a rugged and distinctive landscape in a remote location, this film was mostly shot at Lake Ladoga, Europe’s largest freshwater lake, located in northwestern Russia between St. Petersburg and the Finnish border.

Winner of the Golden Lion award at the 2003 Venice Film Festival for both Best Film and Best First Film, exactly as Tarkovsky had won the Golden Lion for his own debut 41-years earlier, IVAN’S CHILDHOOD (1962), yet for Siberian-born Zvyagintsev, a former actor and TV director, this remains, arguably, the director’s most dramatically powerful and artistically accomplished film, and his most accessible, while also among his most exquisitely edited, though one ghastly tragedy happening shortly after the completion of the shooting resulted in the unfortunate death of Vladimir Garin who played the older brother Andrei, drowning in a lake not far from where the movie was shot.  In his acceptance speech, a visibly moved Zvyagintsev dedicated the Golden Lion to Garin.  The Cannes Film Festival of 2003 was similarly affected by the death of Emin Toprak, one of the lead actors in Ceylan’s DISTANT (Uzak) (2002), co-winner of the Best Actor Prize, who perished in a car accident shortly after that film was completed.  Part of the film’s emotional center is the struggle the boys have in attempting to develop a new relationship with their father, which seems on again and off again several times before they actually reach their destination, as just when he is about to send his two sons back on the bus to their mother, he inexplicably changes his mind, with Andrei identifying with his father, while Ivan feels cut off and exiled, as if he never existed.  While on the island the father goes off on individual hikes exploring the vicinity before asking his sons to join him, showing them an observational watchtower that overlooks the entire island (that Ivan refuses to climb), leaving the boys plenty of time on their own to squabble about his absence, wondering if he could have been in prison, or has a criminal background.  The father is on a quest to retrieve something buried on the island, digging a fairly deep pit to find it, yet viewers remain clueless what it is, as it ends up having no bearing on the real story, which is the developing family dynamic with its shifting moods, with the father trying to turn them into men, which he actually succeeds in doing, much to the surprise of the boys themselves, but circumstances dictate a hastened maturity, particularly in Andrei, assuming his father’s role (seen wearing his father’s watch), developing skills and instincts well beyond their years.  Most likely it’s the first time the boys have even been apart from their mother, leaving Ivan especially affected by her absence.  Like the Stalin era, there are hidden secrets that we never learn, especially about the father.  This absent father syndrome mirrors the loss of so many soldiers in World War II, with the Nazi Army coming within 20 miles of Moscow in what was a Red Army wipe out, a devastation of human losses, where throughout the war 22 to 26 million Russians died, or 15 – 20% of the entire population.  Historically, this was a moment of great trauma and suffering, and a psychological shock to the nation.  Perhaps this historical realism is at the root of the spiritual revelations of this film, recreating a similar shock, a deep psychological trauma, where perhaps the father’s absence is viewed as an act against nature, and it comes to represent a kind of allegorical elegy, and only through a spiritual transcendence or human epiphany can one appreciate and celebrate a renewed meaning of life.  There’s a photographic aftermath that celebrates their lives together, captured in monochrome snapshots from Andrei’s camera, like diary entries, with the boys playing around, mostly smiling, revealing a spontaneity that never previously existed, leaving viewers with a stark, dreamlike idealization.  For a film that offers few emotions throughout the journey, it certainly pays off with one of the more explosively emotional endings imaginable, as it is wordless, yet moves effortlessly and uncompromisingly to its natural conclusion, summing up the entire film in the last breathtakingly beautiful final twenty minutes.  The original music by Andrey Dergachev (aka Dergatchev) is hauntingly eerie and atmospheric, and at the end, solemn to the core, Vozvrashcheniye (The Return) OST - YouTube (5:07).