Gomorrah (2008) by Matteo Garrone is an immensely powerful, raw and compelling film that seeks to challenge the classic and conventional mobster/gangster movie that has so dominated Hollywood and our respective perceptions. May the viewer beware, this is not a reinvention of Al Pacino’s Tony Montana from Scarface, nor is it an attempt to recycle Marlon Brando’s Vito Corleone from the Godfather series (don’t be fooled by Martin Scorsese’s name attached the film’s credits!). Gomorrah removes us farther from Hollywood’s hills than many are comfortable with and hurls us into the callous and ruthless streets at the lower tip of the Italian geographical boot: Naples. The characters are generally unattractive in appearance; the Neapolitan dialect is horrendous to the ears and the Italian landscape vistas and 'amore' are foregone leaving us with concrete barricades reminiscent more of NYC “projects” than of the Italian villas that we are accustomed to imagining.
The film weaves together five distinct stories to show how the Neapolitan mafia, the Camorra saturates through all levels of the population. We follow Marco and Ciro, two gangly, hormonal, and idealistic teenagers who recite lines from Scarface and seek to disrupt the Camorra’s activities—but, just for laughs. We watch as Toto, an innocent 13-year old gains entry into the Camorra, not fully realizing the sacrifices he must eventually make. The stories of Salvatore Cantalupo, a couture tailor whose factory is controlled by the Camorra to Toni Servillo, a businessman who is in the industry of ‘cleaning’ or really dumping toxic waste in neighboring lands all point to how the Camorra poison the fabric we wear and the soil we grow crops in. It is Gianfelice, who ties everyone together: he is the meek and compliant ‘money runner’ who we follow as he delivers the mob families their weekly payments. In each of the distinct stories, there are elements of resistence to the Camorra’s influence—all “want out” at some point, but the Camorra is not in the business of letting associates go, at least not alive.
It is a film of brutality, corruption, fearlessness, all encapsulating violence and its permeation and preponderance in society: “from high fashion to the very dirt” as the NYtimes critic Mahnola Dargis comments. In the words of New Yorker's Anthony Lane, it was indeed (yet another) Academy Award travesty that Gomorrah was not nominated!
The film weaves together five distinct stories to show how the Neapolitan mafia, the Camorra saturates through all levels of the population. We follow Marco and Ciro, two gangly, hormonal, and idealistic teenagers who recite lines from Scarface and seek to disrupt the Camorra’s activities—but, just for laughs. We watch as Toto, an innocent 13-year old gains entry into the Camorra, not fully realizing the sacrifices he must eventually make. The stories of Salvatore Cantalupo, a couture tailor whose factory is controlled by the Camorra to Toni Servillo, a businessman who is in the industry of ‘cleaning’ or really dumping toxic waste in neighboring lands all point to how the Camorra poison the fabric we wear and the soil we grow crops in. It is Gianfelice, who ties everyone together: he is the meek and compliant ‘money runner’ who we follow as he delivers the mob families their weekly payments. In each of the distinct stories, there are elements of resistence to the Camorra’s influence—all “want out” at some point, but the Camorra is not in the business of letting associates go, at least not alive.
It is a film of brutality, corruption, fearlessness, all encapsulating violence and its permeation and preponderance in society: “from high fashion to the very dirt” as the NYtimes critic Mahnola Dargis comments. In the words of New Yorker's Anthony Lane, it was indeed (yet another) Academy Award travesty that Gomorrah was not nominated!
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