Caro diario

Nanni Moretti turns the camera on himself as he explores his hang-ups and obsessions via three chapters. The first chapter has him take us - the audience - for a humorous journey on his vespa, admiring the beauty and ugliness of suburban Rome. His next journey is through the Islands, searching for solitude to write a script. An hilarious chapter that saves the film, because by the third part we have had enough of Moretti. But we still thank him for taking us through his diary.

What sheer audacity it must take to write, direct and star in your own film. And on top of that, he cast himself in a sympathetic role. Okay, it was somewhat autobiographical. But this film (and in other ways his film The Son's Room) seems like Moretti's testament to his own fortitude, appreciation of simple things, humbleness, and ability to elicit sympathy. Why say these things about yourself? Why not wait for someone else to say them about you? That aside, the real things that ruin the film are Moretti's face and his manor. He looks and acts pompous, like Donald Trump or something. He horribly mis-cast himself! Only see this film if you want to appreciate/ridicule Moretti's sheer audacity and pomposity.

I had to purchase this film after seeing it once late at night on a cable channel many years ago. Although the director can come off as an effete intellectual, his focus is on the Italian culture as it has changed over the past 30 years. As a passive observer of Roman lifestyles, this film is better appreciated when you have some first hand experience living in Rome - since the director's point of view seems to come directly from this city. In a certain way, Caro Dario is the intellectual version or sequel to Fellini's Roma. Instead of satirizing low brow Roman lifestyles, Caro Dario spoofs the pretentious intellectuals (like his traveling comrade who finally breaks down and admits he is a soap opera addict) and the couples who have read various philosophical and historical works to their only son every night to help him go to sleep. As the parents are rattling off the list of philosophers and historians "... we have read Hegel, Wittgenstein, Herodotus, read and re-read Cicero", they hesitate for a moment not recalling one of the authors and the son chimes in "Tacitus!". It was funny just appreciating the stark contrast of the family's existence and lifestyle as compared to the principles and content of what they had been reading to their son.

I call it a relaxing comedy because it depends on vignettes for comedy and then intersperses great scenery and music in between. The comedic moments are just pointed enough to keep the film interesting, e.g., the very precise translation of "mezzo scemo" by Jennifer Beals; the island of misfit parents whose children reign; and the inside view of Roman medical care. Now all that's needed is a prequel to Roman culture. We have seen the Rome of the 1930s through the 1970s in Fellini's "Roma". Caro Dario takes us from the 1960s to the 1990s. Perhaps a good satire on the culture at the time Verdi through to World War I.

Yes it is cute and Woody Allenish but there is something more. It is a movie about an ordinary man, who enjoys doing quiet things by himself such as riding around Rome on his Vespa and walking by himself, he is not a hero he's anyone. The music is really good and I managed to find it all on Napster and other sources. Notice some themes such as the Soccer(football) nets (goals) and the scene where he watches the nun on tv, that same scene is in Cinema Paradiso! I like World music so the scene of the band playing for the dancers is great-who is that group...what is the song? I didn't like the interposed parts showing Henri the serial killer or the Italian movie and I thought the last story was a bit boring- notice on the scene where he is looking for Passolini's murder spot how he just doubles back on himself.

I could go on talking about this film and it comes in as one of my five best Cinema Paradiso, Unbearable Lightness of Being, Manhattan, and The Year of Living Dangerously.

Caro diario (dear journal), is a little undiscovered gem of a movie, maybe a bit artsy, but never pretentious or boring. The main character is Nanni Moretti, the director, played by himself. Using a very original narrative, sometimes giving the impression you're watching a documentary only to be surprised when Nanni continues what the off-voice was saying to a guy in a convertible, it is an observation of different (and random) aspects of today's Italian society. In the first part Nanni rides around Rome on his vespa, alternating monologues commenting whatever's in sight with long cinematic scenes where the images and music ooze a mood that says all, the most memorable example of this being the visit to the beach where Passolini got murdered. In the second and most hilarious part he and a friend visit several Italian islands in search of peace and quiet. This part contains some Woody Allen-esque observations on human nature, tough comparing Moretti with Woody Allen would be underrating him, as making an island impossible to live on because it only consists of couples with a single child and illustrating it in such a witty manner seems far out of Allen's reach. The third part is Moretti's quest for a cure for his skin disease, taking him from doctor to homeopath to dermatologist and back. This seamed the lesser of the three parts, yet still very entertaining and funny tough somehow an anti-climatic ending to a great movie. And a great movie it is, certainly considering the director's favourite flic is 'Flashdance'.