Omertà

The other night, I had the privilege of viewing a film that will likely see only a limited run in this country - Italian director Matteo Garrone's 2008 crime drama Gomorra. The film's title refers to the ancient Italian organized crime society camorra, a mafia-like group that operates primarily in the city of Naples and the region of Campania. Little-known in this country and rarely portrayed in film (unlike the over-abundance of mafia pictures in both the movies and television), the camorra is less centralized than their Sicilian brothers to the south, yet operate along similar principles - political control, drug trafficking, racketeering, extortion, and assassination. And their reach is wide - a note at film's end informs the audience that the camorra has been responsible for over 4,000 deaths in just the last three years.

The film is based on journalist Roberto Saviano's book Gomorrah, the release of which forced him to seek 24-hour police protection from the Italian government. Saviano's book was a work of investigative journalism, and while the film adaptation is clearly a work of narrative fiction, there is an inescapable documentary feel to the proceedings. This is partly due to Garrone's use of local Neapolitans and non-actors from the region of Campania (in fact, three cast members were later arrested for their own camorra connections). The lack of soundtrack music and a heavy reliance on jittery hand-held camerawork also lends Gomorrah an unshakable feel of authenticity. And Garrone's use of shockingly bland urban backdrops and hideously designed public housing tracts firmly grounds the film in the actual neighborhoods in which the crime organization holds sway (his incorporation of the hulking and nightmarish Vele di Sampi apartment compound, a textbook case of urban development gone wrong, was a masterstroke of location shooting). But it's the film's refusal to fall victim to cinema's long glorification of Italian organized crime that makes Gomorrah unique.

The film has been compared to Martin Scorsese's 1973 semi-debut Mean Streets, in that both pictures serve to deflate current notions or portrayals of organized crime. Mean Streets can definitely be seen as a corrective to The Godfather, in which Scorsese's petty thieves and bickering, Catholic guilt-plagued goons are a world away from Francis Ford Coppola's almost classical presentation of honor and blood. But while certain characters in Gomorrah reflect organized crime's obsession with their own image and legacy (two young wanna be's bustle around Naples ridiculously quoting lines from Scarface), this film is not merely a corrective to The Sopranos. Rather, it's a clear-eyed and politically outraged denunciation of an unattractive, honorless and violent subculture that severely impacts the lives of millions of Italians (literally, as a major subplot about improper dumping of hazardous waste makes clear). The critic Armond White, assuming his usual role as passionate devil's advocate, claims the film "conveys no revulsion" to the showcased acts or individuals, but he's nearly alone in this regard, and I can't see the film offering anything but revulsion for nearly every action that takes place within the two-hour span. In fact, I see much more Italian neo-realism and the haunting isolation of Antonioni than any nod to Scorsese-style engagement in Gomorrah. Nearly every violent scene (and for a crime film, there actually aren't that many, especially by American standards) comes off as tawdry and clinical, with none of the protracted ballet-of-death setpieces those raised on a steady diet of Quentin Tarantino might expect. No melodramatic speeches on honor or family crop up - there are no shots of a plump mama baking ziti or dons stroking kittens. There is a detached gaze to this film, as if every scene was being overheard or accidentally observed. And by linking various related and unrelated characters through a disjointed narrative, Garrone manages to offer a sustained portrait of the various levels in which the camorra impact Neapolitan life.

This is powerful cinema, and a remarkable recent addition to the canon of Italian film (and a worthy successor to earlier Italian works of political cinema, such as Francesco Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano, Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers, and works by the Taviani brothers). What Gomorrah shares with these movies is an unflinching look at the mundane realities behind corruption, repression and violence. And yet, this is not only a work of stripped-down documentation. There are amazingly composed shots throughout the film that struck me as particularly masterful. The closing shot, framed distantly and held for an almost unbearable amount of time, is one of those moments of absolute perfection so rarely found in cinema, in which the entire narrative becomes reflected through one action yet manages to remain organic, authentic and deeply moving. It's typical of the film that the final moments are among the most beautiful and most repugnant.

So, no surprise that Gomorrah, clearly one of the strongest releases of 2008, was completely overlooked by the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Picture - Garrone's grim portrait of the streets and poverty puts the lie to Slumdog Millionare's Horatio Alger-styled happy ending. Here's hoping the film gets an eventual second life in this country on home video and the rental market.