Le Caïman

Much touted as Moretti's 'Berlusconi' movie, (and it does end, somewhat chillingly, on the trial when the 'film-within-the-film' has taken over completely), "Il Caimano" is a sweeter, darker, more personal film than the Berlusconi tag might suggest. Indeed the infamous PM isn't really a character at all, or rather that is all he is, a character in a film script. Instead, it's all about Bruno, a director of very cheesy exploitation pictures who hasn't had a hit in years and whose marriage has also gone down the tubes who suddenly finds himself energized again when a radical young lesbian presents him with a script which turns out to be a searing indictment of Berlusconi, (well, maybe not that searing). The film is about Bruno's efforts to get the bloody thing made in a conservative Italian film industry scared of its own shadow.

It's at its best in the domestic scenes and not in the film-making parodies, (which already have been done to death), and Moretti shows a real empathy for all concerned. Bruno, in particular, is beautifully played by Silvio Orlando as a basically sad, fat, unattractive little man bemoaning his lot yet finding a kind of redemption by making the one 'serious' film of his career. When finally he is able to finance a punchy film centering on the end of the trial the film-within-the-film shifts up a gear leaving us in no doubt where Moretti's sympathies lie.

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.

Dante Alighieri,in the thirteen century, spoke of Italy as if it were a woman. This is what he wrote: " Italia,not a provincial woman, rather a brothel". And yet so many beautiful masterpieces have been created in this shamble of a country. The problem lies in the sad awareness that over the last 50 years nothing special has been created whereas so much has been destroyed. Moretti talks of a generation, strongly influenced by Berlusconi, that has been brainwashed into stupidity, greatly via the media, owned by the above mentioned, that is not capable of seeing the reality for what it is, but only for how it is represented, by only a selection of TV channels. Any one who dares speaking differently from him or his subjects is quickly displaced and removed. Not much of a democracy, Italy has become.. No wonder Nanni Moretti doesn't seem too happy; who, in his right mind would? thank god he is only 50 and not 80. We will hopefully see more good things from him for a while.

I'd been looking forward to seeing this movie for so long I was bound to be slightly disappointed. And indeed I was. But I loved parts of it all the same. Silvio Orlando's performance as a bankrupt producer, for one, was magnificent. I thought his three or four minutes in "Aprile" were the highlight of that movie, and in "The Son's Room" he practically stole the show. So I was delighted to see Moretti giving him a leading role. Throughout the movie, you can see on his face the effect of the blows and of the suffering that have been his lot, but despite it all he's good-hearted and optimistic and enthusiastic about his work. The depiction of his growing friendship with the young director played by Trinca is also moving and natural.

And while our Italian friends may be known worldwide for their cultivation of "il dolce farniente," "Il caimano" happens to be a celebration of the joys of work. Some of its finest scenes are simply depictions of Orlando's producer talking to the people he needs to talk to get his movie made. In "The Son's Room," too, some of the best scenes involved Moretti's therapist at work, talking to his patients (one of them played by Silvio Orlando, as it happens). And now that I think about it, some of the Italian books I've been reading lately (by Primo Levi and Laura Grimaldi) also celebrate work. Strange. And here I was thinking that the only people who loved work in Europe were the Germans ("Arbeit macht frei" and all that).

Mindful of the gruesome fate of the critic in the B-movie excerpt shown at the beginning of "The Crocodile," I'll remain silent, for the most part, about the things I didn't like as much. But I still can't help wondering why our Italian friends throw such hissy fits about this former prime minister of theirs. Did his companies launder millions in ill-gotten gains? Did he corrupt the judiciary and the police and muzzle his critics? Did he make a whole generation of Italians cynics? Who cares! That's what politicians are supposed to do, isn't it? At least his government had the guts to ban smoking in bars and restaurants, and for that alone he can steal all the millions he wants!

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.