Gomorrah is a self-conscious repudiation of gangster movies like Scarface; a reminder that the classy foot soldiers of The Godfather and the bumbling mafiosi of The Sopranos have very little to do with the real world.
A Film Review of Gomorrah
135 minutes—Color—Italian, w/English subtitles—Not rated
Near the beginning of Gomorrah, Matteo Garrone’s jarring new film about organized crime in southern Italy, two teenage boys, decked out in ridiculous Miami Beach guayaberas, do their best Al Pacino impressions while dutifully re-enacting a scene from Scarface. It’s a funny moment in an otherwise sobering film. Even in Naples, home turf of the omnipotent, unmerciful Camorra syndicate, these two boobs strut around like Tony Montana, boasting that they’re going to “blow the Colombians’ heads off.” The way they idolize Pacino’s screen gangster seems innocent enough—like American boys donning straw hats and plastic pistols to play-act life as cowboys. Except that these two young Italian guys have real guns, and aren’t as skilled with them as the more seasoned mobsters who want them dead.
Gomorrah is a self-conscious repudiation of gangster movies like Scarface; it is a reminder, courtesy of a stiff slap in the face, that the classy foot soldiers of The Godfather and the bumbling mafiosi of The Sopranos and even the outsized-if-doomed Tony Montana have very little to do with the real world. Unsparingly violent, Gomorrah aims to portray mob life as it is, and to lay bare how horribly suffocating civilian life becomes for those under its thumb. Over the last three decades, the Camorra—which comprises numerous clans trafficking in guns, drugs and protection, along with interests in fields from textiles to tourism to supermarkets—has murdered some 4,000 people. Its members include not only hoods, but doctors, businesspeople, chemists, builders and street sweepers. No matter where they turn, Garrone tells us, Neapolitans cannot get away. Neither, it turns out, can Garrone: to add grit, he cast non-actors in several roles; three of these non-actors now have been arrested for real-life ties to the Camorra. Moreover, Roberto Saviano, whose nonfiction account of the Camorra was the basis for the movie, is under police protection; the clan has put a price on his head.
Gomorrah tells five interwoven stories about power, money and blood in the slums of Naples. Don Ciro, middle-aged, earnest and discreet, is a sottomarino—he trudges around Naples’ decaying housing projects dolling out (insufficient) hardship money to families of Camorra members who are in jail. Toto, a sweet-faced 13-year-old, is inducted into a Camorra group when he dons a bullet-proof vest and allows himself to be shot at close range. “Now you’re a man,” the triggerman tells the boy, who’s lying on the ground, dazed from this mafia Bar Mitzvah.
Then there’s Roberto, a clean-cut university grad desperate for work, who gets into a racket dumping toxic waste where it shouldn’t be dumped. And Pasquale, an earnest and talented tailor working for a Camorra-funded outfit, whose life is put at risk when he’s recruited by Chinese competitors.
Finally, there are the Tony Montana wannabes. After stealing cocaine from a group of black immigrants; holding up a video arcade; and robbing a bundle of high-octane weapons from a Camorra cache, a clan head puts out a hit on the clueless boys.
The grim portrait the film paints of life in Naples–it is nearly impossible to live normally there–is powerful. When a wedding procession makes its way through one floor of the projects while, upstairs, a group of hoodlums sells cocaine, it is evident the Camorra has driven its tentacles deep into every aspect of these people’s lives.
Even so, Gomorrah doesn’t quite measure up to the best films of its ilk. In City of God and Boyz N the Hood, for example, we are genuinely moved when bad things happen to the characters. That’s because we are their fellow travelers, voyeurs peeking in on their family lives and romances. We know their dreams and hopes.
Not so in Gomorrah, where the characters are shown only during the narrow period the movie depicts, and exclusively as their lives relate to the Camorra. In a sense, of course, that’s the point: in Naples, life independent of the Camorra doesn’t exist. But operating this way, Garrone loses the deep empathy that adheres for characters in these other, better, films.
In the film’s most poignant moment, 13-year-old Toto is forced to choose between his own life and that of a friend. The sequence works because, from the beginning, we’ve seen Toto at home, interacting with his loving mother, delivering groceries for small tips. When eventually he makes his choice, we understand what is being lost. This is not the case for the other characters.
Still, as a brutal indictment of a vicious way of life, Gomorrah delivers. Shot cinema-verité style, the film is beautiful in its depiction of desperation. It does not allow viewers to avert their eyes and never wavers from its central thesis: life under the mafia isn’t Oscar material. It’s grim, narrow, and dangerous.
