Gomorra

I managed to get a seat in the dress circle for this one after sneaking past the pass-nazis, otherwise I would have been about 80 rows back from the front again. The massive theatre was completely packed, which is apparently normal for the opening weekend, and I'm pretty sure that the person in front of me was filming it on his mobile. Cannes security: there is none.

The film, by Matteo Garrone, confirmed perhaps almost all the Italian stereotypes I'm aware of. It opens in a tanning parlor, where a bunch of Italian mobsters are getting their bronze on, before one of them pulls out a gun and obliterates the others. Several other sequences in the film link Italian culture – weddings, music –to gang warfare purposefully, and some might find this slightly offensive. The film captures the extremity of the drug-fueled gang warfare of Gomorra, and according to the statistics played at the end of the film, it's quite realistic. Gomorra is based on the novel of the same name by Roberto Saviano, which forced the author into hiding because the mob found it too revealing. Gomorra loosely braids the stories of five Gomorra residents together to describe how every life is affected, or deeply involved in, the web of organized crime controlling the city.


With the handheld shaky long tracking shots, natural lighting and green tint cinematography (again), the film tries a documentary feel and succeeds without feeling too intrusive or too distant. There's no score to soften the gun blasts, and the camera views the violence with a cold, unblinking eye. I felt like a big idiot covering my eyes during some of the shooting scenes, when all of the other jaded journalists seemed completely unfazed, but I couldn’t help it.

The film follows a young boy who becomes embroiled organized crime, two teenagers who try to start their own gang, a young man who narrowly escapes mob life, a middle-aged tailor who sells out his skills to a Chinese-run clothing factory, and Don Ciro, a gentle senior responsible for distributing the mob’s money to families. As each character sinks deeper into the town’s escalating warfare, driven by gang members' desire to retaliate and “rack up corpses”, each must decide whether to go all in or try to get out. The youngest boy’s story is the most involving, but it was difficult to become attached because there was so much else to focus on.

A good film that portrays Italy in a very bad light, I highly recommend Gomorra for people who enjoy pitch-black, utterly humourless gangster movies and that shaky handheld long tracking shot green tint aesthetic. Though this film would probably be better categorized as a subversion of the gangster genre, taking a closer look at the maschinations behind more glamorous shoot outs on film. Or something. I've never wanted a cocktail after a screening more than now.