L'Oncle de Brooklyn

The best italian film of the 90's, the most extreme and radical work since SALO', a ruthless representation, in a surreal-metaphorical key, of a civilization condemned to worshipping its own blindness. The two sicilian directors use a language free from compromise and from the traditional storyline rules: the movie is photographed in a sharp and very contrasting black & white, with no beautiful pimp music, and lacks a logical story. There are no women (the ones we see are actually men), and the language is strict sicilian dialect. The directing style is characterized by long fixed shots on a post-atomic world, which is really present-day Palermo, inhabited by fat people in socks and underwear who burp and fart while roaming around smelly alleyways and waste dumps. And above all, there is the black humor of the two "cinics", acute, ruthless, and very intelligent. An extraordinary essay of surrealistic cinema in perennial confinement between drama and irony, between disconcertment and a liberatory laugh, the whole mixed with a profound sense of squalor and discomfort that accompanies the viewer even after the film is over. A film that shows the loss of certainty and moral values in today's world, the absence of order and sense: God is dead and man is alone in this abyss, this is what Cipri and Maresco seem to be reminding us of with a resonant blow.

At least a brave director getting into the surrealist world with this interesting and intelligent movie. It looks like sometimes the first movies from Louis Bunuel (L'Age d'Or, Un chien andalu).