Mob Rule

Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah

by Cindy Fuchs

GOODFELLAS: Marco Macor and Ciro Petrone play two teens obsessed with the glorified gangster lifestyle. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Recommended

Marco (Marco Macor) and Ciro (Ciro Petrone) are playing gangsters. They point their guns at each other and make gunshot noises, their lanky adolescent forms alternately crouched, ready and erect as they imagine themselves tough guys. "Tony Montana," they shout, "The world is ours: the whole world, Miami, all of it!"

Naïve and frenetic, the boys' fascination with the American movie gangster is both ironic and apt, as they live in Campania, where gangsterism is the predominant business. Theirs is one of several stories explored in Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah (Gomorra), the much-praised Italian nominee for 2008's Best Foreign Film Oscar.

Based on journalist Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System (Picador), it's by turns operatic and farcical, presenting the mafia as all-consuming: part long-standing culture, part grinding machine.

When Marco and Ciro steal a stash of weapons (Beretta 93, Kalashnikov: they know all the makes), they think they've come into their own. But they've only made someone else angry, revealing again that the chain of violence in the mob — as in the rest of the world that will never be theirs — is endless. Thirteen-year-old Totò (Salvatore Abruzzese) delivers drugs and groceries in the mob-owned tenements, where he sees his future in front of him every day, witnessing murders, betrayals and deals going bad. As Totò looks forward, Don Ciro (Gianfelice Imparato) looks back. A money carrier, he fears the incursion of a new gang, and tries to position himself for survival. When he offers to do for the new organization what he's done before, the cocky midlevel boss sneers at him. "We have to score, kill and we need money. If not, you die, because you're part of the war. We're the same, you and me, in this war."

The scene of Don Ciro's realization and no-return is like a baptism, the camera close on his startled, blood-splattered face, then watching from far and above as he is surrounded by bodies seeping blood from their caved-in heads and exploded hearts. Gomorrah is punctuated by many such moments, annihilations of illusions. As much as victims and aggressors seek to repress consequences, they are, of course embodying them. And this is Gomorrah's most salient insight, its understanding of perpetual pain and terminal hopelessness as all-purpose forces, driving retribution but also anxiety, submission as well as dominance. Marco and Ciro, the Scarface fans, can't see the history they invoke and repeat, they only see the ever-present of the screen, the nobility of their fantasy. They can't anticipate the sheer ugliness, the futility of death.

(c_fuchs@citypaper.net)

Gomorrah | Directed by Matteo Garrone | An IFC Films release | Opens Friday at the Ritz at the Bourse