Gomorra

Matteo Garrone has added a classic to the Mafia genre with his widely praised Gomorrah. He based his film on the non-fiction bestseller by Roberto Saviano (whose portrait of Mafia leaders necessitates him leading an underground existence) and primarily sketches the rough, unglamorous side of the Mafia. Gomorrah is not a star vehicle with a polished storyline, but a complex whole of crossing plot lines in which many relatively unknown actors and amateurs portray a very charged reality in Neapolitan dialect. The images are overwhelming in their authenticity and misleading beauty. The more these lines come together, the more we see that virtually the whole of social and political life in and around Naples is infiltrated by the Camorra. Corruption, settling up accounts and extortion are commonplace, and the families of imprisoned Mafiosi are maintained by colleagues. The most revealing and convincing thing about this hard-boiled film is the way in which young Neapolitans are recruited and how easily they fall for a Mafia life with its very uncertain future. Garrone allows two of them to get reckless and pay a heavy price. He focuses primarily on the broad foundation of an immense army of ‘foot soldiers’, filming their home base as one huge unpredictable pigeon coop, or rather a beehive divided rigidly into ranks filled with changing alliances. (EH)

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