La messe est finie

I came to Nanni Moretti from his wise and witty later movies _Caro Diario_ and _The Son's Room_. So in _La Messa_ I was surprised to see a bitter, angry, and quite selfish Moretti in the role of a suburban priest who seems--much like the psychoanalyst of _The Son's Room_--utterly incapable of helping those who put themselves in his care.

There's lots to like in this movie: the somewhat decrepit but nonetheless lovely settings around Rome, the nods to other great Italian movies (Moretti, in his cassock, playing soccer with the school kids, calls to mind Rossellini's _Rome, Open City_), the intense and largely convincing story. I found particularly compelling a courtroom confrontation involving a judge, a defendant, and Moretti's priest as a witness. I was, on the whole, moved by Moretti's take on the priest's dealings with his brothers-in-arms from what were presumably their days as leftist activists.

On a final note, people are always comparing Moretti to Woody Allen. I don't see why. Their movies have almost nothing in common. I have never seen Allen as anything more than a second-rate standup comic, or as a caricature. Moretti, on the other hand, is a human being.

A priest returns to his home village expecting to have an impact on both family and friends. He is hugely disappointed when he finds that even his mother and father have grown apart with his father's old life crisis and his sister's dilemma. I was reminded of the Irish Drama Calvary which had a similar premise. This is not quite as good but as a struggling Catholic-American, was impressed by the humanity of the script. The Mass is ended, watch this film.

"La messa è finita" is one of the best movies ever directed by Nanni Moretti, telling the story of a young priest and his life among relatives and friends. Their problems urge the priest to evaluate more deeply his vocation. With regard to other movies by Moretti, this one is not as overtly autobiographical as other, more recent titles. This allows the characteristic irony of Moretti a more fluid hand in depicting the little tragedies of his generation. At the same time, he is able to provide a thoughtful and touching portrait of a young priest in an Italy which is less and less Catholic.

The film begins with a wedding and finishes with too. A young candid priest, Don Giulio, returns home and finds bad changes. His new church is empty. The last priest is married and has a son. His father has an affair with a young woman (he goes to this woman to talk to her but gets upset and says good bye gruffly. That's the Moretti's style, I mean a very serious character in a very tense situation. The situation becomes funny because his reactions are unexpected, sudden and violent) His sister wants to have an abortion. His old friends, from the day he was a revolutionary, are misfits. An ex-commie is now catholic and wants to become a priest and finally get married. Don Giulio is on the brink of depression and resignation because he realizes that the new world is only based on material and sexual needs. He is an obsolete and useless man like a relic from the past. In my opinion, the scene that sums up his future behaviour is when he is playing football with children and suddenly falls down like a dead man which symbolizes the priest's distress. There is a leitmotiv music with a nostalgic mood played in a various ways all along the film. The music is very important because it explains Moretti's feelings, for instance : he plays with sound effects (the musical fade) in order to emphasize the drama itself; when his sister deals with his father, Don Giulio turns the radio up outloud : ironic and dramatic at once. Nanni Moretti also uses singing as tongue-in-cheek effects. He deals with serious and sad matters in a bittersweet way. Instead of the usual Michele Apicella character, Moretti now plays priest Don Giulio (like Socrates) who still enjoys his cakes, his ball, his mother and himself. Moretti treats the theme of the uncomprising individual through the courage and the stubbornness of his desperate priest who, for example, undergoes three times the violent attacks of men that don't want to park their car properly. The best scene is when the priest tries to save a friend from hoodlums and recite Dante. Nanni Moretti shows us a wide array of fantastic characters, for instance : the misanthropic man who wants to erase his past. "La messa è finita" is a subtle pamphlet and an analysis of today's Italy cleverly directed. Iconic actor Nanni Moretti remains the best contemporary European director.

"La Messa è finita" begins like Bunuel's "Nazarin ": a priest who believes in a pure religion,an idealist who does not realize that the society around him is primarily materialistic ;it ends like Bunuel's movie ,or more likely like the same' s "Viridiana" , two works in which both heroes accept ,the former ,a symbolic pineapple , the latter ,a menage à trois.

Since half a century , Catholic churches get more and more empty ; the ritual has lost its mystery ,gone with the latin of yore.When he enters his church ,Don Giulio finds a place covered with dust and cobwebs ;apart from his two altar boys, nobody attends his mess.The world outside is not prepared to accept a strict moral .

The former priest is now a happy husband and a father of a child he adores (" you can love both humanity and the one you cherish") ; his father deserts his faithful wife for a woman who could be a daughter ,and he wants to have a baby ;his sister ,who 's pregnant by a man who is more interested in the fate of rapaces and snakes (ahead of his time,as far as ecology is concerned) ,wants an abortion ;during a premarital meeting ,a future husband laughs himself silly at the biblical meaning of the verb " to know" .......Cesare,an adult who attends Sunday school, can only be considered a joke in this context .

As the movie progresses, Don Giulio realizes he's more and more concerned with himself: "when I hear somebody' s confession,I can't help but thinking of my own problems "; when his dear mom commits suicide ,the first question which comes to his mind is : "who will think about me now?";And his last mess revolves around I ,me ,mine.

Trust Moretti to avoid clichés and to come up with unusual scenes : the most questionable is the beating up near the fountain ;it comes to soon in the movie .

"La Messa è finita" ,and when the unfortunate parents of his future work ,and IMHO materpiece "la stanza del figlio " (2001) lose their only child , they will find some consolation,not in religion,but in meeting their boy's friend.