Black Souls (Anime Nere)

BLACK SOULS (Anime Nere)         A-                   

Italy  France  (103 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  Francesco Munzi

I made this film in a town that legal professionals and journalists stigmatize as one of the most mafia-ridden places in Italy, one of the nerve centres of the Calabrian ‘ndrangheta: Africo.  Africo, in the province of Reggio Calabria, on the Ionic coast has a beautiful coastline and is unknown to tourists.  When I said I wanted to make the film there, everyone tried to discourage me: it’s too difficult, it’s inaccessible, it’s too dangerous.  I arrived in Calabria full of prejudice and fear.  I discovered a very complex and diverse reality.  I saw mistrust turn into curiosity, and people opened their doors to us.  I mixed my actors with the residents of Africo, who acted and worked with the cast.  Africo has a very tough history of criminality, but it can help us understand many things about our country.  From Africo, we have a better view of Italy.

─Director’s Statement, Francesco Munzi

Reminiscent of the raw, graphic reality of the Taviani brothers, where Tuscany has been replaced by the rustic interior regions of southwest Calabria, the toe of the country’s boot-shaped peninsula, a sunbaked region of rugged mountains on the Mediterranean coast where the harshness of the barren lands mirrors the starkly deprived economic conditions of the residents living there.  Much of the film was shot in the ancestral town of Africo in the Aspromonte mountains, a region filled with stone churches, age-old traditions and ancient settlements, but also an area rife with criminal activity, as it’s the heart of the Calabrian mafia, known as the ‘Ndrangheta, a word that translates to “courageous men.”  In the 1970’s they gained notoriety by kidnapping wealthy people, including the grandson of oil tycoon John Paul Getty, considered the richest man in the world at the time, held captive for five months, whose severed ear led to a $2.7 million dollar ransom payout for his release, which they quickly invested into the international cocaine market, a strategy that has resulted in a $60 billion dollar criminal empire as of 2013, where they currently control more than 80% of Europe’s cocaine traffic.  The ‘Ndrangheta were also secretly involved in the Red Brigade kidnapping and subsequent murder of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978, where due to the effects of the subsequent 1980’s government crackdown on the Sicilian mafia, the lesser known Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta has become the most powerful criminal enterprise in the world. Without delving into regional history or providing any narrative backdrop, the film paints a searing portrait of one particular family, providing a generational exposé of tragic proportions, allowing the viewer an insider’s view of the family business as it happens, becoming a meticulously detailed character study, highlighting the sharply contrasting personalities of those involved.  In much the same way that Matteo Garrone’s GOMORRAH (2008) reveals how the local community was drawn into nefarious activities of the Naples mafia, based upon the journalistic revelations of author Robert Saviano (who received death threats afterwards), this film is also adapted from a 2008 novel by Gioacchino Criaco, who was born in Africo, revealing the intricacies of blood feuds and old-world customs that have been handed down through generations of interconnected family groups tenuously held together by marriage and blood lines.   While Garrone’s film is a long, sprawling narrative filled with dozens of characters that is often confusing, this is a much simpler depiction, a story told without a hint of embellishment, held together by an enveloping mood of impending disaster, where much of it is expressed through long takes and extended wordless scenes. 

The story concerns three brothers, the Carbones of Calabria, each introduced separately, where the youngest, Luigi (Marco Leonardi), is something of an ethically challenged hothead with a hair-trigger temper, seen thoroughly entrenched in the drug-smuggling business right from the start, a brilliantly choreographed business meeting held in Amsterdam that unfolds in multiple languages with international implications, where merchandise from Amsterdam headed for South America makes a stop in Milan for money laundering, as the money is recycled into legitimate stocks and real estate deals managed by middle brother Rocco (Peppino Mazzotta), a seemingly respectable businessman who prefers the more upscale, culturally diverse, well-to-do life in Milan, the financial center of Italy.  All but ignoring these two and everything that they stand for is their elder brother Luciano (Fabrizio Ferracane), a gruff and stoic man of few words who would rather spend his days tending to his herd of goats in the mountainous hills of Aspromonte.  Luciano’s son Leo (Giuseppe Fumo), however, hates his father for turning his back on the family operations and wants nothing to do with the farming business while idolizing his uncles, where he’s eager to fulfill his dream of becoming a man of action, and with it power and respect, where he wants in on his family’s activities, seen impatiently practicing shooting at the firing range.  Luciano, just as steadfastly, tries to prevent his son from being dragged into the blood feuds by refusing to do business with Don Peppe, a local drug lord who killed Luciano’s father.  But that doesn’t stop Leo, a trigger-happy teen, who in a moment of anger shoots up a rival bar in the middle of the night, running off to the protection of his uncle in the city where he’s just itching to be somebody, setting off a precipitous chain of events.  With often minimal dialogue, what particularly impresses with this film is the carefully calculated pace, beautifully edited by Cristiano Travaglioli, who also edited Sorrentino’s 2014 Top Ten List #5 The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza), a slow burn with an emphasis on the rustic and still primitive nature of the Calabrian region, where the rolling hills couldn’t be further away from the speed and vulgar action of most gangster films.  While there are few women present except widows and wives, their presence, especially the pained expression of the elderly matriarch, played with authority by Sicilian actress Aurora Quattrocchi, speaks volumes.  People have been playing their same respective roles in this highly patriarchal society since Biblical times, where the region is filled with crumbling ruins and seemingly ancient stone houses.  The land is the same over a passage of time, while the people inhabiting it come and go.  It’s not as if there are other options available. 

And therein lies a sad truth about the story, as the same could be said not just for those in organized crime, but for any number of impoverished people around the world whose future has been stolen from them even before they were born.  Unfortunately desperate people are drawn into desperate situations.  While the uncles are the focal point of the film in name only, viewed more as symbols of a disintegrating moral authority, ultimately the most featured character is Leo, the blindly impatient son whose youth represents all hopes for the future, yet who so unglamorously wants to throw it all away.  We cringe watching his every move, as he couldn’t be more wrongfully misguided, literally fighting against improbable odds to be something more than a small fish in a much larger pond.  Plucked from hundreds of local kids, Fumo provides much needed authenticity, along with many others that were cast in smaller roles in order to speak the local dialects, but he also carries on his back an inevitable sense of doom, as early on the audience can sense his life, as well as all the other lives, have lost all meaning, but have been damned by longstanding blood feuds that existed prior to the film’s opening.  The audience doesn’t need to know the details of any backstory, or know what petty squabble provoked such a violent reaction, as it’s clear the neighborhood is populated by families who have all endured similar circumstances, where they’ve uniformly been forced to adapt to their cruel and inhospitable environment.  Understated and low key throughout, Leo simply doesn’t understand what he’s getting himself into, as instead he remains headstrong and naive, enamored by dreams of power, yet he’s surrounded by a world of shifting alliances, self-interest, and betrayal, where the ultimate family tragedy is watching their children die so young and so needlessly.  It’s an unvarnished horror that haunts the entire picture.  Strip away the artifice and it becomes the only story that really matters, where the sins of the fathers are passed on to the sons, given a sense of timelessness in this particular setting.  Beautifully photographed by cinematographer Vladan Radovic, it feels like we have stepped back in time, similar to the age-old Balkan conflicts of Joshua Marston’s The Forgiveness of Blood (2011), becoming a land that time forgot, carrying an underlying sense of dread throughout, like the looming presence of a still active volcano, where it’s only a matter of time before the inexplicable violence erupts and explodes, sending fear and chaos in every direction.  Intelligent and always compelling, mood is paramount in a film that continually plumbs the depths of revenge and moral outrage, where a common outcome leads only to death and despair, becoming a modern day comment on an old-world tragedy that never stops devouring more victims. 

Caesar Must Die (Cesare deve morire)

CAESAR MUST DIE (Cesare deve morire)     B                    

Italy  (76 mi)  2012  d:  Paolo and Vittorio Taviani

We hope that when the film is released to the general public that cinemagoers will say to themselves or even those around them… that even a prisoner with a dreadful sentence, even a life sentence, is and remains a human being.          —Paolo Taviani

It’s great to see the Taviani Brothers are back and still making relevant films, last seen in 1987 with GOOD MORNING, BABYLON a quarter century ago, but they have been working right along, writing and directing a few made-for-TV movies, but nothing on the festival circuit, so after winning the Golden Bear 1st Prize at Berlin, this was a pleasant and most unexpected surprise.  It was the Taviani’s ultra-realistic PADRE PADRONE (1977) that won the Cannes Palme D’Or (1st prize), the almost never seen IL PRATO (1979) launched the career of Isabella Rossellini, while the magical THE NIGHT OF THE SHOOTING STARS (1982), arguably their best work, won the Cannes Jury Prize (3rd place).  Known for their rugged Tuscany landscapes which are incorporated into their films, this film is shot entirely indoors, given a near documentary look as the filmmakers depict the preparations for a staging of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar set inside the grounds of Rome’s Rebibbia maximum security prison, where many of the men who perform the play are imprisoned for drug trafficking charges, mafia related felonies, and murder, so perhaps it’s not surprising many inmates could channel the violence in their own lives to unlock parallels in the play.  Except for the final performance sequences which are in brilliant color, the interior prison scenes are all shot in black and white, where the film has a completely non-traditional and experimental design, mixing final footage of the staged play performed live with rehearsals and earlier audition reels which introduces us to several of the inmates eventually chosen to perform in the play.  The audition process is easily the most entertaining, as many of the inmates are over the top, literally pretending to act, trying to be Brando, while others are playfully themselves horsing around in front of the camera, while some are surprisingly natural, especially when asked to express anger.  Listed alongside their screen photos are the crimes they have been convicted of and the length of their sentences. 

With 6 months preparation time, the process begins in a rehearsal room with the director, with each inmate herded back into their cells afterwards where they often continue practicing while confined, or when gathered in small groups in a recreation area.  Often they would veer off script, adding some choice line from their own personal experience that at least for the moment impacts upon the scene, a kind of jailhouse improvisation used to get into character.  Using Italian dialects instead of Shakespeare’s English, the speech used is what we hear everyday instead of ancient text in Iambic pentameter, where inmates could largely be themselves, some with incredibly expressive faces.  Often using long takes from cinematographer Simone Zampagni, many linger on inmates as they exchange dialogue or are seen rehearsing significant scenes, both in and out of character, where this fuses fictional moments into the play, altering the style and rhythm of a historical drama and turning it into a work breathing with the life of the participants, as if this is the telling of their stories.  This heightens the artificiality of performing a play, where the staging of the work in and around the confined prison space is highly inventive, creating a fascinating tension beneath the surface of the film, where some of the more significant speeches from the play, presumably to a large assembled crowd of friends and Romans, are simply set before a lone window of the prison which offers a view looking out, where the claustrophobic cells and recreation areas, for all practical purposes, become the Roman Forum and the Senate.  The directors take liberties with one character, Salvatore Striano who plays Brutus, as he is a former convict who was pardonned from Rebibbia in 2006 but participates as if he were still an inmate.  Certainly one critique with the final product may be with the lushly romanticized saxophone score from Vittorio’s son GiulianoTaviani which might sound more appropriate in Bertolucci’s LAST TANGO IN PARIS (1972).   

While called Julius Caesar, the play is largely about the insurrectionist actions of Brutus, who conspires to assassinate the Roman leader, eventually tracked down and defeated by the Roman army at the Battle of Philippi.  Brutus is the psychological study of a man who undertakes a shadowy role destiny never intended for him, becoming a man with a dual nature, as part of him will be forever linked to Caesar, certainly bearing the ghost of Caesar after stabbing him to death, which immediately starts taunting him, as if cursed by his own deed.  Many consider him among the greatest figures in Shakespeare, while others cannot conceal their contempt for him, yet Antony (his enemy) had nothing but high praise, “This was the noblest Roman of them all,” a stark contrast to the imperious Caesar, who was reviled for his ruthless ambitions.  It was Caesar’s target of the Roman Senate that forced Brutus’s hand, where morally he feels compelled to act on the corrupting influence of unchecked power.  Giovanni Arcuri is quite convincing as Caesar, a towering figure in physique as well, easily seen as imposing on the battlefield, while Antonio Frasca as Mark Antony gets to deliver the most famous passage from the play, his funeral oratory, while standing next to the corpse of Caesar, but directed towards a starkly bare prison window, which has a positively chilling effect. Cosimo Rega plays the Iago-like Cassius, another conflicted character, as he seems to drive the actions of Brutus and his compatriots from behind the scenes, perceiving “something in the air,” but he convinces Brutus that murder is paramount to patriotism, a view that continues to resonate today when jihadists or other so-called national liberators are also commonly called terrorists.  It is Rega, a 20-year inmate, who is given the last word on this play, returning to his cell afterwards where he utters, “Since I have known art, this cell has become a prison.”  Certainly this eye-opening account by the Taviani’s challenges our view of humanity and history, where we often demonize our enemies, including the prison population, who account for themselves admirably here.

The Purple Sea (Viola di Mare)

THE PURPLE SEA (Viola di Mare)                 C

Italy  (105 mi)  2009  d:  Donatella Maiorca   

While this is another one of those movies “inspired by true events,” there’s nothing remotely truthful about this film.  In fact, Berlusconi’s iron grip seems to be suppressing every ounce of creative thought coming out of his nation.  Instead, everything seems to have the Italian seal of approval stamped on it as a generic product, which means despite a relatively modern and risqué subject matter, a same sex lesbian love affair, there’s nothing remotely modern or groundbreaking about this film, irrespective of its obvious efforts to be exactly that.  Set in the 19th century on one of the rugged islands of Sicily where the predominate export is rocks, where male workers slavishly work and earn money from the rich landowner performing back breaking work in rock quarries, while females are seen as a hindrance and a burden, where the island’s fathers really don’t care if baby girls live or die, as only sons are valuable.  Into this brutal, male dominated world, where her father (Ennio Fantastichini) is the work foreman, a man who routinely beats his own children for acts of insolence and disobedience, where girls remain illiterate and aren’t even sent to school, Angela (Valeria Solarino) narrates her own birth, where from the outset she has difficulty fitting in and is perceived as having the devil in her, which turns out to be a crush on her best friend Sara (Isabella Ragonese). 

Fast forward a dozen years or so from early childhood, where Sara has been living on the mainland, but returns to a flurry of interest shown by Angela, where they meet out alone on the rocks overlooking the sea showing romantic inclinations, which is realized using various camera angles instead of any expressed emotion or state of undress.  Already the established tone is dishonest, as the audience is led to believe this is a raw and brutal world, where the graphic reality on this remote island is barren and harsh, where this could just as easily be the setting for a Taviani brother's film, yet these two women who are knowingly breaking the boundaries of love are continually shown in a safe mode, no nudity, no poetry, no passion, nothing daring or shocking, where there isn’t a spark or an ounce of honest emotion between them.  Yet the viewer is expected to perceive a rhapsodic love affair just materializes out of thin air.  It’s only when Angela’s father arranges her marriage to a quarry worker that she blatantly refuses, expressing her desire to love only Sara.  When her father hears this, instead of killing her, which seems to be his first inclination, he locks her up in an outdoor underground storage shelter until she’s willing to accept his conditions as her father, a position supported by the church, where he ends up leaving her there to rot for what seems like weeks on end, with the family slipping her meals.  But rather than break her will, she’s only disgusted by her father’s brute force and the tyrannical hold he has over her family, a blatant metaphor for Berluscone if ever there was one.    

What eventually breaks this logjam and what happens afterwards is too ridiculous for words.  A more obvious solution would be to ship one of the women off the island, which is the punishment shown later for wrongful male behavior, to have her live on the mainland with a relative or friend, or even in a convent, which could certainly be arranged by the church.  The father could be rid of her, which is what he truly felt about her in the first place since she wasn’t a son.  But this more realistic option is never considered.  Instead it veers into the territory of the absurd, becoming overly showy and ludicrous as time goes on, losing any emotional credibility.  Perhaps something like this really did happen, but the events as presented in this film are simply a showcase for a world the director wants to present, which is a heavy handed drama that attempts to place a message of same sex love and female empowerment against the backdrop of a brutal, male dominated atmosphere of fascist tyranny, using a remote and impoverished historical setting to make her point.  Despite the terrific on-location shooting and some excellent performances all around, this is a limp costume drama that couldn’t be more pretentious, never getting at the truth, never trusting in her characters, resulting instead in something so timidly generic and utterly homogenized, given the politically correct seal of approval, but ultimately a wretched offering.