There are those moments when we tire of ourselves. Earlier today I had me one of those. I was enjoying a fairly bad cappuccino, in an artsy film house in beautiful Utrecht, my city. The skylight was kind, the bar was half filled with people talking pleasantly, my beloved wife was at my side. We are enjoying her free day, the autumn is going away and the winter is chilling the air, we have come recently from a week-long trip to Naples, I have re-read Malaparte recently, I am an argentinian recycled many times in different countries. And we are about to see “The hand of god”, the last Sorrentino movie.
Can I be more of a cliche?
So we sit in the hall, and the propaganda passes and the movie unfolds. I had read few lines, here and there, about this film. I knew that it is about a young person, probably Sorrentino himself, who lost his parents to carbon poisoning, escaping from his own death by going to a football match in which Maradona played for FC Napoli. I expected some form of sappy remembrance of the love of a city for his prodigal son. But I had seen the work of Sorrentino before, so I convinced myself to go and see it. To get over myself being a walking cliche, as they say.
Luckily.
If you are reading this, you know that I am a writer. A good or a bad writer, I do not know. All the same, I write. And so I wonder how do I sound like. Do I have an own voice yet? Or am I merely repeating, re-creating, the voices of the writers I admire? Perhaps more important, can I really re-create their voices? Or am I capable, at best, of a poor copy, a saddened and empoverished attempt, a lacking attempt?
I can tell you one thing. Sorrentino is definitively recreating Fellini. And not subtly. Every memorable scene from Amardcore is here, retold, refilmed, reviewed. Do you remember the cruise in the night and the small boats seeing it pass? Think in the ferry to Stromboli leaving shore at night and people jumping into the water after it. Do you remember the thousand and one nights sheik and the (possibly) thousand odalisques? Here we got Kashogi (the richest men in the world instead of the journalist, prey and predator switched), with a most beautiful escort, in the middle of the night, in deserted Capri. We got the whole family at the countryside, the communist elders, the weird mix of tender love and furious rage, the exuberant breasts, the fantasies of a teenager, the city. Yes, most of it, the city. Naples. Not the town of Borgo San Giuliano, but for all what matters, that town too. Because Naples envolves it all. If Amardcore was a exuberant, brilliant and never seen before, or after, critique and ode to Italy, so it is “The hand of god”. A true recreation, a mirror 50 years later in which to see ourselves after so many things have changes and so many things have stayed true.
Life imitates art, they say. Fabietto, the main character of the film, wants to become a film maker. In one of the last encounters, he shouts and is being shouted at by his heroe, the (real life) film director Capuano. Asked why would he want to make movies, he shouts, he cries: La vita e’ manca!
Because life is lacking.
And maybe that is what this is all about. Because we need to reinvent it everyday, we need to see Fellini again, and remake him in Naples today, or in Utrecht, or in Caracas. Because we need to understand how a migrant, a corrupt, ignorant and brilliant migrant like Maradona could steal the heart of a city as ancient, and perhaps as heartless, as Naples. Because we need to understand that everything changes so that…
never mind.