A DESERVING WINNER OF THE GRAND PRIX AT THIS YEAR’S CANNES FILM FESTIVAL, MATTEO GARRONE’S PORTRAIT OF THE MAFIA’S STRANGLEHOLD ON SOCIETY IS, QUITE SIMPLY, ONE OF THE GREAT ITALIAN FILMS.
Based on a non-fiction expose which sent author Roberto Saviano into hiding and became a publishing sensation, this multi-threaded drama assembles a teeming fresco of criminality. We never actually hear the word ‘Mafia’ but the subject matter’s only too obvious, as attention switches back and forth between a dapper elderly payments courier caught up in an escalating internecine conflict, a teenager from a seriously scary Neapolitan housing development who wants to run with the big boys, and a couple of teenage nutters living in their own version of Brian De Palma’s Scarface and unfeasibly convinced they can outwit the local clan. Unbelievably, organised crime has its fingers in the haute couture business, financing the expert sweatshops where the dresses are stitched together, but also in the waste disposal industry where cash-strapped councils don’t want to know where their toxic effluvia ends up. Come to think of it, it’s not like the Camorra have their grip on society — they are society.
Garrone’s film refuses to trade in false optimism, presenting decades of economic short-term measures and heaving national debt as the underlying reason for seemingly endemic corruption. It’s a fascinating study, not least because the movie-making exemplifies everything that’s wonderful about Italian cinema — from Visconti’s operatic scale to Francesco Rosi’s detailed social engagement, Fellini’s unforgettable faces and Antonioni’s compositional flair for spaces and architecture. Everything adds up to one stunning piece of celluloid. — Trevor Johnston.