European Films

The Neapolitan mafia, known as the Camorra, gets the Syriana treatment in Matteo Garrone’s Gomorra (Gomorrah), one of the most incisive organised-crime films to emerge from any country since the 1970s. Bundling five storylines culled from Roberto Saviano’s sprawling non-fiction novel of the same title, Gomorra could be considered as the first Italian hyperlink film since that term was coined a few years ago. Garrone’s near-perfect alignment of the efforts of a team of six screenwriters (that includes the director and Saviano), editor Marco Spoletini and his own work as a director make the film one of the most complex yet clearly understandable Italian films of recent years. Like the bestselling novel that has been translated into 33 languages (including English), Gomorra the film should find success far and wide.

 

While eliminating quite a few parts of the original novel, there are still five story strands and over 20 major speaking parts in the film, assuring that the first 30 minutes are needed to simply gain an understanding of who all these characters are and how they relate to one another. Not that this is immediately clear from the start. Gomorra’s plot isn’t something that is supposed to be followed; instead the audience is just "surrounded by it," to paraphrase Roger Ebert on Syriana, another hyperlink movie in which there are too many connections to mention, not all of them immediately apparent.

Gomorra might be more disorienting for people wholly unfamiliar with the subject than for those who are acquainted with the Italian reality and those who have read the book. Editor Marco Spoletini’s work is important in keeping everything clearly readable yet fast-paced, though the film is slightly too long at 135 minutes to be captivating throughout.

 

Major characters include 13-year-old Totò (Salvatore Abruzzese, a natural), who finds himself drawn to the Camorra from an early age (something that was also forcefully explored in the Frazzi brothers’ Certi bambini). Marco and Ciro (Marco Macor and Ciro Petrone, both impressive) are somewhat older and in their adolescent impertinence think they can get away with stealing cocaine and ignoring which Don rules their neighbourhood.

 

But adults and people in middle age are also involved. Pasquale (Salvatore Cantalupo) is a tailor who is offered an opportunity to teach his trade in an illegal Chinese-run counterfeiting workshop, which does not sit well with his current illegal employers, who are funded by the Camorra. Roberto (Camine Paternoster), fresh out of university, starts to work for Franco (Toni Servillo), who runs an illegal toxic waste business that makes millions for the Camorra, while Don Ciro (Gianfelice Imparato) is a Camorra "submarine," someone who makes the rounds of the families of imprisoned Camorra to help them with their payments until the men return.  

 

Like the Godfather films, Gomorra looks at organised crime from the inside out, which leaves it up to the audience to decide whether to sympathise with people who are essentially criminals. (Except as extras, police are nowhere in sight and never seem to be on anyone’s mind either.) Certainly, it is possible to find recognisable human behaviour in the many people that populate Gomorra’s streets, whether it be their fears, their loyalty or their lust for money, power and revenge. The biggest difference with Francis Ford Coppola's films, which were based on the work of Mario Puzo, is that Gomorra is more concerned with the assorted lowlifes and foot soldiers of organised crime rather than centre of power from which all evil emanates.

 

In a quasi-documentary style that never glamorises but certainly does not deglam either, Garrone and his regular cinematographer Marco Onorato find a strange kind of beauty in the ugly reality of Naples and its surrounding areas. Some shots, including the closing shot and a view of Marco and Ciro gunning down a river, are of an astounding beauty in all their simplicity, while Garrone is also greatly aided by superb location work and the unmistakable reality of the faces of the many non-professional actors that make up the cast. For added authenticity, most of them speak in the Neapolitan dialect (Servillo, the only famous name and only one of the few professional actors in the cast, is a notable exception; even though he is from the Naples region his diction and vocabulary are very much cleaned up).

 

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