Anime nere

This is another gangster film where there isn't all the action of the traditional entry in the genre. If Goodfellas is Saving Private Ryan, then Black Souls is more in the vein of The Thin Red Line, not the same caliber as that film but you get my drift.

This is much more of a character study of the players involved. The eldest of a trio of brothers has spent decades tending to his farm and staying out of the family business, which is for the most part unnamed shady stuff. But when his son goes to visit his goon of a brother with intentions of joining the dark side, a sequence of events fall in place resulting in a finish that I don't think anyone can see coming.

Not a lot happens in the first 2/3s of Black Souls in an action sense, and if I was in the wrong mood I might not have liked this as much as I did. But I thought the conflict between the four chief characters (the dad, his two gangster brothers, and his son) was established very convincingly. Come with patience to this one and you will be well rewarded. One of the scenes near the finish is simply magnificent.

"Dark Souls" or "Anime Nere", as the original title is, is a movie about a feud between two mob families, triggered from an act of recklessness perpetrated by a young man who desires to step into the "glorious", but sleazy and risky world of mafia, and defies his rural origins and the agricultural works his father is doing for a living. It benefits from silence (and total absence of soundtrack and sounds, in general) in certain scenes, a fact that amplifies the intensity which pervades them, or simply steers clear of sounds when silence is required. Marco Leonardi, Peppino Mazzotta and Fabrizio Ferracane deliver solid performances as the three brothers, the two first deeply involved in mafia's trade (mostly drug dealing), and the latter one as the seemingly innocent and uninformed (although he is the eldest brother), whose performance is extremely layered and he, as an actor, is exceptionally expressive and encapsulates every single emotion. Giuseppe Fumo stands out as the bold, careless, vengeful Leo who wants desperately to get engaged into the Mob's ruses, and acts without processing his ideas or following the instructions from his experienced uncles. The scenery is beautiful, the dialogue is equally witty and true to life, the storyline, although it steps in familiar ground, manages to keep the audience's interest during the whole runtime of this motion picture. Soundtrack perfectly matches every shot of this film, and it successfully integrates some Mediterranean customs concerning deceased family members, and grief is portrayed (and expressed) frankly and realistically. There are twists and turns near the end, that make it grim, but also credible. A flaw of this picture, though, is the abruptness of the ending, and the fact that makes no sense, but the final scene's ambiguity gives food for thought to the viewer. Apart from its defects, this is a well-made crime drama that, even though it's not a masterpiece, it honours its Mafia genre and it's recommended to the fans of it, and to the ones who would like to watch a dark European mob film, and have a good time too.

Every few years an authentic Italian mafia film comes along, the last one being 2008's Gomorrah. Now we have Anime Nere; A slick, well made, taut and perfectly paced film about an unsung rise to power. It takes place deep within the crime underworld in a village outside of Milan. Grounded in realism and contains no superfluous love stories or unneeded fluff. Classic Mafia film moments and themes are handled deftly and with fresh eyes. The enormity of the film emerges only its its last few frames. People that idolize Scarface or The Godfather will have a new classic on their hands. Thoroughly entertaining and thought provoking cinema.

ANIME NERE boasts some of the best acting that I have seen in any film from anywhere in the world over the last 10 years. Perhaps only SICARIO (US 2015) can bear comparison with this extremely high standard of acting.

Francesco Munzi's direction is also first rate, aided by excellent stark photography.

Dialogue is extremely credible, and the script builds up to an unbearable tension point without much physical action.

So why do I rate this film only 7/10? Because I expected more reaction from the target family, and I find the open ending frustrating.

PS - I decided to rewatch ANIME NERE and I have to admit that the ending makes more sense than I initially surmised. The point, trite but valid all the same, is that death is supposed to be a deterrent among crime-pursuing families, but once a crime is committed, even a minor one like stealing goats, revenge will follow, and death is no longer a deterrent but an objective.

Interesting aspect: as in THE GODFATHER, there are three brothers here, and you know instinctively that the brother who wants to stay out of crime is the one most likely to be the action man. The other two are Hamlet-like figures, who hate Barreca for killing their father but talk rather than do something about it. And any distraction carries the ultimate price, as Luigi and Leo find out.

In crime, as in life, there is always someone stronger and more lethal than you. What I initially saw as an open ending is in fact the only ending to criminal life. I change my rating to 9/10 and recommend this film.

Last Saturday I went to see "Anime nere" at the London Film Festival with great expectation. In fact in August I had read a very positive review on La Repubblica newspaper. I must say it met completely my expectations, the movie is very well done, convincing and the light, the light is absolutely sublime. I like all the actors performances. The director told us, after the projection, that they were a mix of professional and not professional ones (very difficult to distinguish for the high quality of their performances). The plot is very intense, but not in a bad way. The most disturbing scenes are not shown on screen, but left to the audience imagination. The movie is set in a rural village in Calabria, south of Italy, where the three brothers were born and where Luciano, the elder, is still living with his family. The two younger brothers, instead, had moved to Milan in the north of Italy few years back.

Highly recommended, a potential candidate to next year foreign Grammy awards!!