Gomorra

Two men driving in an old Italian road in a luxurious black SUV. The oldest one, who is driving, stops the SUV and tells the other passenger to throw the basket full of peaches, received by an old woman, on the grass, "Do not you realize how bad they smell?" Tells the oldest one to the young man, who throws it away a little skeptically.

The film has no odor, but many times the power of pictures makes us feel things, giving us no doubt about the bad state of the peaches. What is rotten? The nose of the mobster whose traffic consists of burying toxic waste from the multinationals? Or is it the peaches grown in the land he himself is poisoning?

“Gomorra” is based on the first book by Robert Savino, a young Napolitan writer who dared to tell with real names the legendary criminal organization known as the Camorra.

The film teaches us that, to describe the Camorra, the word "organization" is perhaps too generous. The Camorra is more than an organization: it is a situation. The Camorra counterfeits luxury couture dresses, handles toxic wastes, traffics with drugs and women, the Camorra is like a long handbook for everything that is illegal.

The Camorra is the lifetime of thousands of people in Naples and its surrounding cities. It is a social situation in which whole communities through generations live and die of violence or poverty.

As an "ecosystem" the director Garrone describes the Napolitan Camorra. He decides then to present the criminal “ecosystem” by shooting a film that looks more like a National Geographic documentary that a human drama. This dispassionate gaze by Garrone makes it even more terrifying.

Recorded in real locations, with 'natural' actors, with handheld camera, without incidental music and the rhythm of a disinterested documentary, the film is dedicated to show how people live in the Camorra, and nothing else.

"Just wanted to give the audience the feeling of living in this world for two hours," says Garrone. One can hardly talk about stories or characters. The word "situation" is back to being the more appropriate: we see situations and, through a series situations, we can understand a little better what the Camorra is or, more specifically, the lower class people of the Camorra ,because even the people in the film do not know who the real bosses are.

Gomorra is full of pictures such as the peaches one, moments of simplicity that may go unnoticed, but forcefully contain much more complex situations.

During an interview, Garrone mentions the film Paisà (Roberto Rossellini, 1946), as its main reference film, but the film that comes to mind while watching Gomorra is The Rose Seller (Victor Gaviria, 1998). Gaviria and Garrone drink of Italian neorealism, but it is the mix of neorealism with two equally abhorrent realities (the Commune and the Camorra) what makes them special.

It is essentially the same proposal, the same intrusive camera, the children themselves criminals, the same children dead.

Director: Matteo Garrone

Writers: Roberto Saviano (book), Maurizio Braucci (screenplay)

Stars: Gianfelice Imparato, Salvatore Abruzzese and Toni Servillo