iretos

I don't want to start talking about politics, it would take me too far, so let just stick at the movie. I rarely saw a movie with so little dialogue and so much meaning, so many things said with images. So clearly violent and so intimate. So political and so private. It seems impossible to tell so much without words, we're no more used to this. Director Steve McQueen did it in a terrific way, with just a long one-shot, quickly talked sequence between a first and a last part of silence, just broken by violent outbursts of noises, by shouts and beatings. Hidden violence, senseless violence, carried on within the walls of a prison where every dignity and pity are dead. In this, the formidable performance of Michael Fassbender. His bright look, the steadiness in his eyes will follow you for a long time after the end of the film. You will find yourselves begging for somebody to feed him, to save him, so true and unbearable his pain is. Forget Robert De Niro, forget Al Pacino - there's a new great, huge actor in town.

Great debut, the one of Kim Rossi Stuart as a director, without pathetic scenes, tough and with no sappy concessions to an impossible happy end. A true world described with a true language and a deep tenderness, but knowing that certain situations allow very little tenderness to those who live them. A world seen through the bright, deep and severe eyes of a wonderful boy who is the focus of his family, the benchmark for his sister, the "strong man" both his mom and his dad need for different reasons, unsettled and insecure as they are. For the people living outside Italy who saw or have to see this movie, the world described in it is our world so don't go looking for some kind of "Kramer vs. Kramer" calm and aseptic atmosphere, here.

There are plenty of beautiful moments in the movie, but one would be enough to love it and it's when the father and his children come back home one evening, Tommi raises his eyes and he sees their house's windows: it's dark, no light. In the lift, he whispers: "The lights were off", mom has gone away again, he thinks without saying it. The look that father and son exchange is so intense, their desperation so palpable that it takes your breath away. I repeat, this scene would be enough. But there's much, much more.