L'enlèvement

I like every part of the movie and everyone really got into their roles, because basically it is a very sensitive topic and a part of the history of a people and the influence of religious divisions. It is known that the Vatican is responsible for many evils, which are not talked about, and this story is just one of the details in all of that. It's not an ordinary story either, but something that happened in the second half of the nineteenth century to many families and it known that the influence of the Inquisition was strong also centuries before that. It is good to be. It is good to watch, even if it is for the sake of some knowledge about the history of the Catholic Church.

Or is it strangers than fiction? Well whatever the case (and no pun intended as always of course), the apparently true story of a young boy who is being taken away from his family ... to become something quite ... well different from what he'd otherwise be. And the struggle of the family to become whole again as one might suspect.

Am a bit surprised to see all the awards and nominations - had not heard about this before. But that should not sway you away or take anything from the movie. Sometimes there's movies you just discover like this (and the same probably is true for you) ... by the way kidnapping (in this case literally, so definitely no pun intended) is nothing I would call a discovery ... but what happens after that ... well there is quite the mayhem that ensues ... so don't expect this to pull punches or be soft (action part of it but also the general story) ... there is a text introduction and an ... outro-duction? Not sure what it is called, but you get the meaning surely.

As a film movie lover, depending on what city I am living in, I broaden my horizons by going to watch films at any festival. Since moving to Vancouver to pursue an education in film production at UBC, I have been excited to visit VIFF and watch a film. After scrolling through the website, I decided to see 'Kidnapped,' an Italian film by Marco Bellocchio. I haven't seen his films before, but I was excited to see this one. The film includes an intense historical drama of a Jewish toddler kidnapped by Pope Pius IX in 1865 because it was believed he had received a secret baptism. It was one of the best films I have seen and deserves more recognition. This rich, operatic film resonates strongly with the audience through the director's storytelling and the emotions portrayed by the actors in the movie.

Now here's a story that's set some time in the past, although it's not that long ago and it might leave you quite aghast, as a child is abducted by a dogma in sheep's clothing, it will leave you disenfranchised with feelings of hate and loathing; now the outcome isn't pretty but you may learn something new, about conditioning by others that impacted how you grew, the brainwashing and persuasion - indoctrination, education, that was planted in your mind before you fledged, matured and grew; but there's one thing that won't come as a surprise or revelation, that there's masons, cults and cliques that will lead you to damnation, they control the lives of others, keep their secrets under covers, once their hooks have found their mark, you'll get accustomed to prostration.

Seen at NYFF61.

As with "The Traitor", another broad-brush panorama of a changing world, Marco Bellocchio's political sympathies are not hidden, but the dilemmas and perplexities facing his characters can often be oversimplified. Here in "Kidnapped", he recounts a shameful episode in the waning days of Papal secular power prior to the unification of the Italian state, in which a 6-year-old Jewish boy is ordered by the authorities (they of the "Holy Office" of Inquisition infamy) to be yanked from the arms of his parents because of an alleged furtive and illicit baptism performed when his was an infant, making him a Christian who, for the protection of his immortal soul, could no longer be raised in a Jewish family. He is taken to Rome, to be raised in an institution for converted boys destined for the priesthood, while his case becomes an international scandal, seized upon by anti-clerical circles throughout Europe and beyond, to the immense irritation of the Pope and the Curia.

The notion of dogma is central to Bellocchio's account (he co-wrote the screenplay), with those of both the Church and of the Jewish community leaving the boy, Edgardo, yanked between the two, emotionally crippled. (To be sure we get the point, Edgardo innocently recites a rote definition of the word during a visit by the Pope.) And the annexation of the Papal States by the anti-clerical Kingdom of Italy, which should have brushed aside religious impediments to the by-then young adult Edgardo's resumption of a relationship with his family, also fails the cause of secularization and human agency through the intercession of the dead hand of yet another dogma, this one of the secular-legal kind. Any chances of putting aside impediments to loving human relationships are thus dashed.

The narration is uneven and at times a bit paint-by-numbers, but the screenplay, while over-the-top is some places, elsewhere shows self-restraint, for example in not seeking to caricature Edgardo's treatment at the hands of the Church as brutal (beyond, of course, the brutality of the kidnapping itself and of the ongoing separation from his family). While clearly putting institutional self-interest first, the priests and nuns are shown as acting with kindness and even a form of love for the boys in their care. Despite moments of rebellion, Edgardo is shown as being irrevocably absorbed into their world, even as change swirls all around them. The psychological evolution here might have been treated with greater precision and subtlety, but Bellocchio in the end makes his point, which I take to be that there is no going back on the forces that shape us, however perverse.

Visually, the film is a treat. Bellocchio, the well-named "beautiful eye", treats us to color-saturated, painterly sequences - some of the interior shots seem downright, if self-consciously, Vermeerish. And Bellocchio has always a gift for casting - "Kidnapped" may in the end be worth watching just for the tremendous performance of Paolo Pierobon as Pius IX, the last Pope to reign over the Papal States, whose bone-headed, unflinching self-certitude (it was he who formalized the doctrine of papal infallibility even as his political actions demonstrated its opposite) served as an accelerant of his ultimate downfall. (Pierobon's physical resemblance, in different ways, to both the late John-Paul II and Benedict XVI is surely not accidental.) So many other, smaller roles, are ideally taken and vividly portrayed. Like "The Traitor", this is very much an ensemble performance, and all the finer for it.

"Kidnapped" is an honorable effort to grapple with a complex subject, and even if it settles in the end for some facile exposition, it is well worth seeing. At a time when so many films are so narrowly focused, often hermetically so, on issues of self-realization and personal relationships, it's nice to see a project with some ambition and scope, even one that, as here, doesn't completely meet its promise.