The Taking of Power by Louis XIV

La prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV (Criterion DVD, 2008)
Directed by Roberto Rossellini
France, 1966
In French with English subtitles

For an altogether different take on the accumulation of power and wealth from an Italian filmmaker, you could do a whole lot worse than to sit down with this Roberto Rossellini-directed period piece originally produced for French TV in 1966. While Louis XIV has all the bad hair and gaudy finery of a generic costume drama, Rossellini's approach is anything but pedestrian. Drawing a Machiavelli-like bead on the 17th-century king's gradual transformation from a fun-loving mama's boy into the monarch who really stuck it to the French aristocracy, the director craftily constructs a meditation on both the nature and the trappings of power that's way more interesting than the silly looking photo below might lead you to believe. Since pudgy, non-professional actor Jean-Marie Patte is something of a revelation as the Sun King, an unexpected bonus from the extra features on this disc is learning how Rossellini channeled Patte's on-camera jitters and inability to remember his lines into a performance that's something special--how funny to think that what looks like supremely regal indifference on Louis XIV's part might be largely due to stage fright from the actor playing him! A minor gem. (http://www.criterion.com/)

Clothes make the man: Louis XIV at Versailles

Gomorrah

Gomorra
Directed by Matteo Garrone
Italy, 2008
In Italian with English subtitles

After just missing a chance to see this Cannes Palme d'Or winner in Buenos Aires last month, I finally got to see the big screen version of Roberto Saviano's mob masterpiece last Friday. Although the film adaptation isn't quite as mindblowing as Saviano's book, it still delivers the moviegoing goods with five gritty and uniformly well-acted stories having to do with a few of the lesser-known organized crime activities--the manufacturing of bootleg haute couture, the prominent use of children as soldiers in the local gang wars, toxic waste dumping in Italy and abroad--said to be emanating out of Naples' real life slums. While all of these storylines will be familiar to readers of Saviano's riveting chronicle, Garrone keeps things interesting here by drifting in and out of the various narrative threads with few of the normal cinematic cues. Even more intriguingly, he boldly tells his story without any apparent unifying point of view--leaving it up to the spectator to determine the film's moral compass. Although those who like getting hammered over the head by American directors may miss the point, the result is a strong, unsettling work that would make a fine double bill with Francesco Rosi's classic Salvatore Giuliano. I look forward to adding the DVD to my small but growing collection of cinema italiano sometime soon.

For more on the book and film, see Barbie Nadeau's "Streets of 'Gomorrah'" in Newsweek here.

Salvatore Giuliano

Salvatore Giuliano (2004 DVD)
Directed by Francesco Rosi
Italy, 1961
In Italian with English subtitles

• A lawyer: "Murder, kidnapping and blackmail--now it all becomes political."
• Gaspare Pisciotta, Giuliano's right-hand man: "I collaborated with the police. We were all informants. Outlaws, police and the Mafia--they were an unholy trinity."
  

Best movie I've seen in quite a while. Somewhat like a Sicilian Rashomon, Rosi's penetrating inquiry into the July 1950 slaying of the notorious bandit/freedom fighter Salvatore Giuliano delights in posing more questions than it ever seems willing to answer. Sporting multiple points of view in a documentary-like style enlivened by nods to neorealism, film noir, and the courtroom drama, the film provocatively uses the main question about Giuliano's death only as a launch pad to move on to the larger truths and ambiguities beyond the mystery of who killed him. Shifting back and forth in time to throw light on Giuliano's background as a black marketeer, Sicilian separatist, and career criminal beloved by some for stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, Rosi uses an arresting non-linear narrative to craft both a biography of a phantom and a vision of a postwar Sicily fought over by rival factions.

While the whodunit aspects of Rosi's work would be interesting enough in themselves, the visuals here are at least equally impressive. Shot entirely in and around Giuliano's "kingdom" of Montelepre and surrounding towns, the rocky Sicilian landscapes make it easy to understand the otherness of the island in relation to mainland Italy (shades of Di Lampedusa's The Leopard). Local actors, almost entirely non-professionals except for those in two key roles, also lend a certain gravitas to the us vs. them tensions between the small town Sicilians who supported Giuliano and the carabinieri from the north assigned to hunt him down. In one scene, a patriot gives an impromptu speech about Sicily and freedom after being inspired by the scenery in front of him. In another, a machine gun battle at night takes place with the only source of lighting being flashes of erupting gunfire. With consummate artistry and unusual restraint, Rosi laudably leaves it up to the spectator to decide if these are competing views of Sicily or just another sign of the disintegration of Sicilian culture also evident in Salvatore Giuliano's "betrayal." A tour de force. Rating: 5/5 stars. (http://www.criterion.com/)

The Best of Youth

La meglio gioventù (2006 DVD)
Directed by Marco Tullio Giordana
Italy, 2003
In Italian with English and Spanish subtitles

Miramax didn't do anybody any favors with its mindless DVD copywriting ("Passion and adventure...under the Italian sun" it tritely says on one side of the cover; "In the award-winning epic tradition of The Godfather and Cold Mountain" it boldly declares with no real meaning on the other), and the misleading cover art that seems designed to pitch this movie as some sort of an Oprah-friendly romantic trifle isn't much of a help either. Still, those who can move beyond the publicity gaffes will be in for a real treat. First aired as a six-hour miniseries on Italian TV before making it to the big screen as a rarely-seen but almost unanimously-acclaimed two-parter, La meglio gioventù is a monumental, sprawling historical drama that follows brothers Matteo and Nicola Carati (Alessio Boni and Luigi Lo Cascio) through almost forty years of life, loves and loss in the bel paese. I don't normally go for the whole family drama-set-amid-the-social-turmoils-of-a-bygone-era sort of thing because those kinds of efforts usually feel so fake, but director Giordana, screenwriters Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli (two-thirds of the ace writing team later responsible for the equally-excellent Mio fratello è figlio unico, still my favorite film seen in the theaters this year), and an absolutely superb ensemble cast do a Giuseppe di Lampedusa-like job of making the intersections between the personal and the political believable. The result is a highly-entertaining and at times even mesmerizing temporal and geographical travelogue through a 1966-2003 Italy of student strikes, Red Brigade threats, and mafia massacres with a lot more lyricism and soul than we have any right to expect in a movie--much less one that originally aired on TV. Outstanding. (www.video.com/miramax)

Jasmine Trinca as Giorgia

My Brother Is An Only Child

Mio fratello è figlio unico
Directed by Daniele Luchetti
Italy, 2007
In Italian with English subtitles

I saw this excellent movie at the Kendall Square Theater last Friday, and I'm happy to report that it's the best modern Italian film I've seen in ages (the final moments, in particular, just wowed me with all the raw emotion on display). The one plot summary I'd read about it going in didn't sound entirely promising--two brothers, one a communist and the other a fascist, fall in love with the same girl as part of their coming of age/sibling rivalry story set in a '60s and '70s Italy still traumatized by World War II--but the storylines were handled with such energy, unpredictability and humor that I can barely wait till it's available on DVD. It helps that all three leads (Elio Germano as Accio, Riccardo Scamarcio as Manrico, and Diane Fleri as the way-cute love interest Francesca) are charismatic and convincing in playing flesh and blood characters who actually evolve as the story progresses, but the script is equally adept at evoking both a period anti-Americanism ("What can Americans do besides skyscrapers? Nothing!" one disgruntled guy asks) and a domestic cynicism ("A fascist in the family is always handy...like a plumber," Accio notes before roughing somebody up) without resorting to the usual stereotypes. Messy, exuberant and soulful.

Mare Nostrum

Respiro (2003 DVD)
Directed by Emanuele Crialese
Italy, 2002
In Italian with English subtitles

Although my wife and I are visiting my parents in California as I type this, the obsessive compulsive in me couldn't resist bringing you this quick movie review about an Italian woman and mother of three suffering from some sort of bipolar disorder on her otherwise idyllic Mediterranean island. While Crialese lays the death/freedom ocean imagery on a little thick at times, the film's an otherwise watchable meditation on the fine line between sickness and health set in the unusual--for me--context of a small Italian fishing village. A decent enough flick to be sure, but I couldn't help thinking that Io non ho paura would have been a better choice to watch with my folks instead (alas, I will have to look for that one for them at some point). (http://www.sonyclassics.com/)