well it's around 12 a.m. and I'm sitting on my bedsheets taking a long-ass study break. see, i've been studying for my Contemporary International Problems mid-term since Friday night and i'm now going onto Monday morning. the test is on tuesday at 11 a.m.
Like I said before, I started studying friday night, but I took a well-deserved break and went to the cinema to watch a film. I drove to the Cosford Cinema at the University of Miami in Coral Gables to watch a film called Gomorra. It's a film that's been in some sort of distribution limbo. It came out earlier this year and it was screened in a couple of select theaters. I had been dying to watch this film ever since I saw its trailer.
I guess the film is about the Comorra crime family in Naples, Italy. But that's kind of like saying The Wire is about the Barksdale drug empire... it's really only scratching the surface of the entire picture. Gomorra is way more than just a film about the contemporary Italian mafia, whom btw look a lot like Seaside Heights, NJ natives.
First of all, Gomorra is kinda the most beautiful looking film I've seen all year. I think THEY call it Neo-Realism... which I guess means the camera is operated by hand, and the aesthetic is pretty void of any cinematic, or dramatic camera tricks. No music soundtrack... just the audio of the setting and the characters.
The beginning is a little boring and slow. It starts off on high notes with the murder of these thugs in a tanning salon. Then the film takes off by centering around 4 stories... all of which are a bit hard to follow. Some of the stories are clouded with bureaucratese and technical jargon that are somehow related to waste development, money management, and textile sweatshop complications. kinda boring material at first but they definitely apply to the grander scheme of things... very similar to how the initial irrelevance of the docks in season 2 of the wire became absolutely relevant mid-season.
the stories that catch your attention are the ones that deal with human emotion rather than corporate/official hoo-ha. there's a story of a little delivery boy who gets caught up in the Camorra business after finding and returning a gun and a bag of drugs. he goes through little man-proving initiations and what-not and the stuff is just brutal. think bar-mitzvahs but instead of reading the torrah to prove you're a man, you have to wear a homemade bulletproof vest and get shot in the chest. by the end of this kid's story he fuckin goes downhill and submits to the idea of criminal masculinity. deep shit, man.
there's another interesting story about these two teens who are REALLY REALLY into Scarface. they wanna kinda do their own thing in the city so they stick up drug dealers and steal weapons. Camorra pplz aren't happy about all the rumpus, so they tell them to stop or they will totes get killed. they keep doing it. you can see where that's headed. their story also inspired some pretty memorable scenes... one of which (as seen below) have the two idiots shooting automatic weapons in their underwear, lord of the flies-style.
what's great about the film is, not only the illusion of authenticity, but the anxiety I got from watching it. everyone's getting shot here. and when someone gets shot, you better believe it's unexpected or totally subtle. there's no soundtrack... so I feel as if anyone is bound to just get shot outta nowhere, no warnings, no nothing. scarlett johannson shows up on the telly wearing a dress at an awards show... I legitimately thought she was gonna get shot by Woody Allen.
Then I do a bit of research on the film and find out it's based on this non-fiction research-based book. Apparently the author went undercover and wrote about his findings and research. It seems like the making of the book is perhaps a bit more interesting than the actual subject. I hear he's on some witness protection program because he saw A LOT of shit he was not supposed to see. then the dude writes a book about it and publishes it for everyone to see? uhhh is he fucking dead?? apparently not.
anyway, it's a great film and from what I read, it's coming on Criterion very very soon. So I can't wait for that.
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