Il caimano

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.

Shot with very sharp and uncommon intelligence, Il Caimano mixes surreal fancy together with raw and firm realism. A film that marvels for its equilibrium, that moves you and makes you think. A fearless, experimental, very personal work that potentially might be vastly criticized, far beyond the standards of the average Italian film production in terms of quality, sometimes also very funny, full of quotations by Tarantino or by earlier Italian b-movies, maybe stating that this kind of Italy itself looks like a very ugly b-movie. I'd like that Italian critics would acclaim this great movie, but I doubt it will be like this: most probably, it will be fully appreciated abroad. It might be Nanni Moretti's masterpiece. And Silvio Orlando's acting is great. Thank you, Nanni.

Il Caimano belongs to the Nanni Moretti style of film-making that I prefer, film-making with the imaginative uniqueness, delightfully neurotic smart-ass polemic and personal flair of Palombella Rossa, as opposed to the near-documentary style of the (albeit very pleasant, but a tad too autobiographical) Aprile, or the more traditional drama of La Stanza Del Figlio. Il Caimano opens with a sequence very reminiscent of Bianca: a grotesque Communist party gathering in what looks very much like a classroom from the "Marilyn Monroe" high school featured in that surreal 1983 movie. It's a scene from "Cataracts", a B-movie produced by Bruno Bonomo (played with gusto by Moretti regular, the Neapolitan actor Silvio Orlando), responsible also for such "gems" as "Assassin Mocassins", "Maciste against Freud" and "Susy the Misogynist". Bruno is a bumbling, likable fool of a producer on the brink of professional and marital failure (Margherita Buy, a delightful 40+ Italian actress perhaps best known outside of Italy for the female lead in Ozpetek's Le Fate Ignoranti, plays his estranged wife, Paola).

One night, while settling into the lonely, make-shift bed Bruno sets up for himself in his office in the first phase of his marital separation, he is deeply struck by a screenplay a young director, Teresa, has given him in the hope of funding her first full-length feature, Il Caimano... Absurdly, Bruno decides to produce it without having read the screenplay in its entirety and more importantly, before having realised that "the caiman" of the title was none other than Berlusconi! Though this may surprise some, as Moretti himself has famously said, this movie isn't really about Berlusconi. This said, the sequences in which Bruno imagines some scenes from Teresa's movie do indeed re-enact familiar episodes in the rise to wealth and power of Italy's richest citizen, most notably the court-room scenes (at one point the Berlusconi character is accused of "going into politics in order not to go to jail"). Not to mention some real footage including Berlusconi's "joke" regarding a German member of the European Parliament being "perfect" for the role of a Nazi guard in a film (as an Italian citizen re-watching such footage makes you want to be instantly swallowed by the depths of the earth, but it's actually worth staying on the surface just to study the look of stunned, mortified, murderous embarrassment spreading onto Fini, Italy's then-vice-PM's face as his "boss" cracks the infamous "joke"!). Nanni's (as opposed to Teresa's) Il Caimano is about the creative process of an artist. It's also a disillusioned comment on a certain kind of Italian left-wing citizen that has arisen from Berlusconi's Italy, whom Nanni's cameo character in the movie describes in less than flattering terms for their spinelessness and pettiness. Artistic integrity, the power of money (not just Berlusconi's, but what wealth stands for in the creative process), and last but not least, personal and artistic success and failure are also other important themes present in the movie. Some comments on this board also include homosexuality and gay parenting as a theme of the movie, but to me these two elements were included into the story in such a matter-of-fact way, that they were no more thematic than a Julia Roberts romantic comedy is about heterosexuality.

Moretti is in top form as far as visual humour is concerned: the sequence of a gigantic suit-case-full of Italian banknotes from the 1970s falling through the ceiling and crashing onto a desk in the middle of an office, amid the earnest question: "Where did all that money come from?!", is among the most memorable of the last five years that I've seen. There's much of the trademark Moretti photographic flair in Il Caimano: a child's feet treading a sea of gawdily colourful lego pieces strewn all over a floor as if he were a fakir walking on hot coals, a group of young men and women gently swaying to Rachid Taha's infectious North African rhythms while painting the walls of the film set representing key moments in Berlusconi's life, a nocturnal scene with a reconstruction of one of Christopher Columbus's caravels "sailing" down a Roman Avenue called Cristoforo Colombo (only a Roman would know this!)… there's even a nod to Fellini in the sequences of a historic movie being filmed on a beach just outside Rome, reminiscent of Lo Sceicco Bianco both in humour and visuals… Il Caimano boasts some noteworthy performances (though I found some of the minor players a bit wooden): Teresa is played by Jasmine Trinca, a bright young star of contemporary Italian cinema, first seen playing Nanni Moretti's daughter in La Stanza del Figlio and then, to great critical acclaim, the mentally disturbed Giorgia in La Meglio Gioventù (The Best of Youth). Michele Placido, a performer I have never considered a favourite, has a ball playing the comically repulsive actor who is first cast to play Berlusconi in Teresa's movie, and is very funny in the process. Polish star Jerzy Stuhr, known to international audiences for the lead roles in Kieslowski's Three Colours: White, and Dekalog 10, plays the rich Polish producer Sturavsky, a chorus-like character who provides the bemused "foreigner's" point of view on the absurd Italian situation (an essential Nanni ingredient – in Aprile, for instance, it was a French journalist who covered that role…)

For all its delightful humour Il Caimano is also (predictably) a bitter movie, and also a deeply allegorical one (see the final sequences for instance). On whether Berlusconi will win the next elections (meaning the ones that have just passed), Nanni Moretti's cameo character prophetically says: "He has already won" – according to this movie and Nanni Moretti himself, the caiman's steady, corrosive action onto Italian culture which has been dumbed down beyond recognition, the damage he has inflicted on all aspects of life that'll take decades to mend, the opportunistic cynicism he has left as a legacy to his citizens, are battles that he has steadily been winning for the last 20 years.

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.

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.