Gomorrah
Directed by Matteo Garrone
Starring Nicolo Manta, Gianfelice Imparato
Rated R
Release date: February 13, 2009

Towards the end of Gomorrah, a ruthless look at the Camorra crime network in Naples, Italy, a man sees on a television set Scarlett Johansson waltzing down the red carpet flaunting her dress. May not be the typical scene you’d expect from a brutally honest mafia story based on the 2006 book by Roberto Saviano, now 29, that exploited the Camorra and how deep their tentacles stretch. But it’s the right scene.

Let’s praise director Matteo Garrone for injecting such an abnormal scene because it makes the movie work as a whole. It allows for Garrone’s audience to realize that entertainment, stardom, and freedom still roam free in luckier parts of the world. Parts of the world that encourages picnics, romances, and jobs that aren’t mafia related.

Gomorrah heavily, brutally, and unflinchingly buries its viewers inside Naples; a city populated by scum, drug dealers, and the occasional innocent bystander, all of whom literally see all hope diminish before their eyes. Very rarely does a film bury its audience in the same dismay, distanced so far away from any hope, than this one does. Once the gun waving poetic opening scenes occur, Gomorrah demands our attention, commanding us to fancy nothing else that isn’t relevant to mafia wars, drug dealing, young men reciting Tony Montana, toxic waste dumping, and fashion designing. Garrone unfolds five distinct stories tied to the Camorra against a grim and grisly Italy that’s void of cathedrals and coliseums. Amiable feelings and sentimentality — prepare to be surcharged with evil and austerity.

A relation can be correlated between Naples and present-day America. Each society is persistent at aiming toward an exact something, which will constantly stick with that specific idea. In this Italian society superiority isn’t constituted within a political system but rather with a mafia, the Camorra (responsible for 4,000 deaths in the last 30 years). The residents know nothing of free will or speech, just the fact that they’ve got to pay for their lives in order to be protected. They’ve come to be plagued by this because the society demands them to act accordingly; to play by mafia rules, which means the casual people have the slightest chance of survival. In America, change is presently at work and is being put in effect by most of the society. We are acting accordingly. The current times decides the voyage a society takes as well as the destination in which it will end. Visually, director Garrone orchestrates this point feverishly as his voyage takes off with a fierce shooting at a tanning salon and the destination is reached with two bodies being taken away like dirt on a heavy duty back-hoe. In this sense Gomorrah is spectacular at representing chaos and a city being decapitated from the inside out. Sounds a bit like ancient Rome doesn’t it?

What an expansive and impressive cast of characters used to imply the decapitation of a city. Just what the quintessential mafia films call upon when they want to tell a blistering story of the corrupted world. GoodFellas and The Godfather are the prime examples of mafia movies having complex characters. With Gomorrah there’s a boatload of them (at times confusion becomes a bit evident), starting off with the egotistical Franco (Toni Servillo) dealing illegally in toxic waste dumping; wearisome Don Ciro (Gianfelice Imparato) who goes door to door paying out his customers who is just now realizing how messed up the mafia is; tailor Pasquale (Salvatore Cantalupo) who abandons his long time co-worker to aid Japanese sewing workers; eager Toto (Salvatore Abruzzese), a 13-year-old who wants in on the crime life but is soon faced with a question that will haunt him for his entire life; and two teen wannabe Tony Montanas, Ciro (Ciro Petrone) and Marco (Marco Macor) who aren’t cut out for the mafia business but the times demands them to be. Nobility is instilled in each of the main players but it isn’t allowed to bloom due to the inequalities of the society.

Gomorrah isn’t your father’s mafia film. It doesn’t want to be. It doesn’t want to pay homage to any previous mafia related material and that’s what makes it transient. It sticks in the mind because it doesn’t have any ties with its predecessors. Garrone had enough guts to go against the grain and form his own tale of how deep the mafia actually is. Everything from the non-settling camera work showing a side of Italy we don’t usually see and the dialogue from the actors are modern, not to mention a killer soundtrack used to invite modern times into an age old structure of corruption and killing.

Rating: ***1/2 of ****