Il caimano

Well, what do you make of that? 'Il Caimano' is certainly different! It has a magnificent central performance by Silvio Orlando, who makes the whole film work. He plays a man who is trying to make a film about Berlusconi, and his performance is heart-breaking and poignant, funny, compassionate, sad, desperate, all of those things, as his life unravels around him but he keeps on smiling. It is rare that an actor gets such a chance, and Orlando delivers everything which could possibly have been expected of him, and far more besides. His estranged wife is played by Margherita Buy, with just the right level of exasperation. The film is also enlivened by the charm of Jasmine Trinca, a gamine creature like a sleek young cat, and the lanky figure of a boy, who looks wonderingly around her and seems to be seeing the world for the first time. There is much less about Berlusconi in this film than one might have expected. The film is really about the film-maker. Nanni Moretti, the director, has taken a rather eccentric mixed salad approach towards the story, throwing bits of lettuce and cucumber and tomato and slices of yellow pepper in, mixing it up with a very fine dressing, and has produced a delectable feast. It may be all mixed up, but we like it. Dino Risi's 90th birthday is mentioned (he is now 92). This film has the same carefree air of Risi's 1960s classic, 'Il Surpasso'. A fair amount of political satire appears in the film, and Berlusconi is shown both in genuine TV clips and in staged scenes, where he is played by three different actors, which has the eerie effect of reminding us that he would like to be 'all things to all men', and also be 'whatever or whoever you want'. Do not all politicians want to be whoever you want them to be? 'Just love me', or failing that, 'at least elect me, but whatever you do, don't reject me'. Somehow, the strange slapdash manner of Moretti's film suits the subject. After all, Italian politics is a hundred times more chaotic than even the most peculiar film about it could ever be.

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.

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.

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.

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!