Der Italiener

A movie on (or against) Berlusconi, the media tycoon which is presently also prime minister of Italy? This is the "leit motive" in these days, at two weeks distance from the general elections. And the movie was released just yesterday... Is the movie a political propaganda one? Nanni Moretti in an interview broadcast on the same date asserts that he had no intention to make politics. Maybe! Anyhow the scene of Berlusconi at the European Congress in Brussels when he shouted "kapò" to a German delegate and refused to excuse himself or the sequence at the Criminal Court of Milano during a process for mafia connections speak for themselves. Apart from politics, the movie is on the tradition of the Moretti ones, "Caro Diario" and "La Stanza del Figlio" in particular and it is worth to be seen.

First, I enjoyed this movie a lot. I loved the whole lot of film quotes and cameos of directors, including a couple of Moretti trademark takes (like the painting of the scenes while dancing). Someone could say before seeing it "Hey, here's another Michael Moore trying to turn some votes from the conservatives..." but this is TOTALLY wrong. Moretti is above all a director, and you can like him or not, but his movie is something completely different. You will continue to enjoy this movie in 20 years, while apart from some history students, I foresee no such a future for Fahrenheit 9/11... Back to "The Caiman". This is the first movie ever on such a slippery topic like our beloved Prime Minister (oh, yes, FORMER Prime Minister now...). As many readers may know, he was by far the main actor of Italian politics for nearly 15 years now, and no one dared to take a picture of the Italian society, so widely influenced by him and his TVs (good or bad, doesn't matter here). Why, you may ask? Because it's too easy to flatter or offend such a controversial guy; Moretti managed to softly skim over the whole thing, trying to take a picture of Italy in these years... Silvio Orlando's character voted for him, and he never quite criticizes him; the scenes of the would-be movie are soft, never judging, in some cases even childish. As Moretti said, the aim of the movie is not to let the people know the facts about Berlusconi; they are widely known, even by his supporters. But then it comes to an end. And here is no more softness or light. Orlando manages to have the money to shoot only the end of the movie, here Nanni is the actor interpreting the Caiman. He is impressive, bitter, sharp and his grin is something hard to forget. But, still, he is Him; freed from the restraints of physical similarities, it is the same Moretti we've seen as Botero in "Il Portaborse", only Botero now is not so fictitious or unreal. Botero has become the Caiman.

Il Caimano belongs to the Nanni Moretti style of film-making that I prefer, film-making with the imaginative uniqueness, delightfully neurotic smart-ass polemic and personal flair of Palombella Rossa, as opposed to the near-documentary style of the (albeit very pleasant, but a tad too autobiographical) Aprile, or the more traditional drama of La Stanza Del Figlio. Il Caimano opens with a sequence very reminiscent of Bianca: a grotesque Communist party gathering in what looks very much like a classroom from the "Marilyn Monroe" high school featured in that surreal 1983 movie. It's a scene from "Cataracts", a B-movie produced by Bruno Bonomo (played with gusto by Moretti regular, the Neapolitan actor Silvio Orlando), responsible also for such "gems" as "Assassin Mocassins", "Maciste against Freud" and "Susy the Misogynist". Bruno is a bumbling, likable fool of a producer on the brink of professional and marital failure (Margherita Buy, a delightful 40+ Italian actress perhaps best known outside of Italy for the female lead in Ozpetek's Le Fate Ignoranti, plays his estranged wife, Paola).

One night, while settling into the lonely, make-shift bed Bruno sets up for himself in his office in the first phase of his marital separation, he is deeply struck by a screenplay a young director, Teresa, has given him in the hope of funding her first full-length feature, Il Caimano... Absurdly, Bruno decides to produce it without having read the screenplay in its entirety and more importantly, before having realised that "the caiman" of the title was none other than Berlusconi! Though this may surprise some, as Moretti himself has famously said, this movie isn't really about Berlusconi. This said, the sequences in which Bruno imagines some scenes from Teresa's movie do indeed re-enact familiar episodes in the rise to wealth and power of Italy's richest citizen, most notably the court-room scenes (at one point the Berlusconi character is accused of "going into politics in order not to go to jail"). Not to mention some real footage including Berlusconi's "joke" regarding a German member of the European Parliament being "perfect" for the role of a Nazi guard in a film (as an Italian citizen re-watching such footage makes you want to be instantly swallowed by the depths of the earth, but it's actually worth staying on the surface just to study the look of stunned, mortified, murderous embarrassment spreading onto Fini, Italy's then-vice-PM's face as his "boss" cracks the infamous "joke"!). Nanni's (as opposed to Teresa's) Il Caimano is about the creative process of an artist. It's also a disillusioned comment on a certain kind of Italian left-wing citizen that has arisen from Berlusconi's Italy, whom Nanni's cameo character in the movie describes in less than flattering terms for their spinelessness and pettiness. Artistic integrity, the power of money (not just Berlusconi's, but what wealth stands for in the creative process), and last but not least, personal and artistic success and failure are also other important themes present in the movie. Some comments on this board also include homosexuality and gay parenting as a theme of the movie, but to me these two elements were included into the story in such a matter-of-fact way, that they were no more thematic than a Julia Roberts romantic comedy is about heterosexuality.

Moretti is in top form as far as visual humour is concerned: the sequence of a gigantic suit-case-full of Italian banknotes from the 1970s falling through the ceiling and crashing onto a desk in the middle of an office, amid the earnest question: "Where did all that money come from?!", is among the most memorable of the last five years that I've seen. There's much of the trademark Moretti photographic flair in Il Caimano: a child's feet treading a sea of gawdily colourful lego pieces strewn all over a floor as if he were a fakir walking on hot coals, a group of young men and women gently swaying to Rachid Taha's infectious North African rhythms while painting the walls of the film set representing key moments in Berlusconi's life, a nocturnal scene with a reconstruction of one of Christopher Columbus's caravels "sailing" down a Roman Avenue called Cristoforo Colombo (only a Roman would know this!)… there's even a nod to Fellini in the sequences of a historic movie being filmed on a beach just outside Rome, reminiscent of Lo Sceicco Bianco both in humour and visuals… Il Caimano boasts some noteworthy performances (though I found some of the minor players a bit wooden): Teresa is played by Jasmine Trinca, a bright young star of contemporary Italian cinema, first seen playing Nanni Moretti's daughter in La Stanza del Figlio and then, to great critical acclaim, the mentally disturbed Giorgia in La Meglio Gioventù (The Best of Youth). Michele Placido, a performer I have never considered a favourite, has a ball playing the comically repulsive actor who is first cast to play Berlusconi in Teresa's movie, and is very funny in the process. Polish star Jerzy Stuhr, known to international audiences for the lead roles in Kieslowski's Three Colours: White, and Dekalog 10, plays the rich Polish producer Sturavsky, a chorus-like character who provides the bemused "foreigner's" point of view on the absurd Italian situation (an essential Nanni ingredient – in Aprile, for instance, it was a French journalist who covered that role…)

For all its delightful humour Il Caimano is also (predictably) a bitter movie, and also a deeply allegorical one (see the final sequences for instance). On whether Berlusconi will win the next elections (meaning the ones that have just passed), Nanni Moretti's cameo character prophetically says: "He has already won" – according to this movie and Nanni Moretti himself, the caiman's steady, corrosive action onto Italian culture which has been dumbed down beyond recognition, the damage he has inflicted on all aspects of life that'll take decades to mend, the opportunistic cynicism he has left as a legacy to his citizens, are battles that he has steadily been winning for the last 20 years.

In this movie Moretti tells only a part of Berlusconi's story but it's enough to frighten the audience. Very simple, clear, but so strong. The grand final with Moretti playing Berlusconi is freezing, because the director can be cynical and cruel more than the president, with his good fellow smile. The prime minister changed people's mind so much that they can throw a molotov bottle against a judge, imitating the stereotype of the violent communist described by Berlusconi in his propaganda. Awesome the character of Pulici (M. Placido), typical Italian, and the Silvio Orlando's act, but I didn't like Jasmine Trinca. To me is one of the best movies of Moretti.

Those familiar with Nanni Moretti know that, even when Moretti tackles political issues, he does so in such a personal, unusual way. This film is a vehement pamphlet against Berlusconi. Without going at lengths to describe the various reasons why Berlusconi is, to put it in the words of "The Economist", "unfit to lead Italy", Moretti shows the peculiar mixture of demagoguery and cynical opportunism that in his opinion are Berlusconi's hallmarks as both a businessman (before he entered politics) and a politician. Moretti seems to interpret Berlusconi as a symptom of the undoing of Italian society, its values, its way of life, an involution that he traces back to the way television (and in particular the kind of TV programmes that have been the staple of Berlusconi's televisions) has moulded Italian society and the set of tastes and values that in his opinion now prevail in among Italians. The director seems to believe that, for the moment, only a sort of personal resistance is possibile against such a disruption; the court magistrate, to some extent the main character and especially the young, inexperienced and yet talented and quietly tenacious young director, with her trust in the quality and importance of her ideas, are symbols of this resistance. A tough, difficult, dry, and yet thought-provoking film that deserves to be seen by both Italians and foreigners wanting to understand today's Italy better.