The real problem with Favino’s statements in Venice

We all know that there is a crisis in Italian cinema, because “there were roles for actors on the Vorta, now they are all performed by Favino.” Nando Martellone joke Boris very well led to Pierfrancesco Favino who, since that fateful 2010, has been able to make the most of his talent, ranging from major international productions (with Ron Howard and Netflix) to classic Italian chamber dramas, brilliant comedies and Bettino Craxi’s twilight films. Hammamet, all the way to Tommaso Buscetta and the foray into dubbing by providing the voice to Daniel Day-Lewis. Therefore, it is not surprising that his Venetian foray into Italian stories “stolen” from our cinema and told with funds from abroad caused much discussion: even such a star as Mads Mikkelsen (now in the lagoon Bastarden) intervened, not without reason pouncing on the European tendency to dub most of the international films entering cinemas.

From a certain point of view Favino is right: Italy has great difficulty with what we might define as “civil mythopoeia,” an ability – unusual in America – to tell historical facts or personal events, more or less important, with an epic dimension, without always ending in melodrama or involuntary ridicule. . There are many explanations for this attempt, almost all of which are ancient and originate in history and anthropology. The United States is a young nation, much younger than any European country. When the thirteen original colonies rose up against the yoke of the British homeland, only two hundred and forty-seven years ago, ancient empires were already rising and falling in Europe, bloody wars were being fought, Rome had already seen hundreds of glorious parades and just as many devastating lootings.

This applies to people, but it also applies to cultures: the older you get, the more inclined you are to look at the facts of life and history in a detached way, even with irony, putting everything in proper proportion. This end of European innocence, destroyed by the tragedy of World War II, has also spread to culture and entertainment, making our authors much more self-conscious than those who came from abroad. Favino thinks that Biopic of Enzo Ferrari we should have “made it in-house” with Italian actors and workers rather than outsourcing it to Michael Mann, Adam Driver and Penélope Cruz, but he pretends to forget that – about twenty years ago – we did it though and with a certain amount. funds: Sergio Castellitto played a Ferrari in the Mediaset television miniseries. far from despicable as we called it science fiction back then, today it would probably be premium TV or something. He pretends because Favino himself was there as a Ferrari employee.

This fantasy is all but forgotten, as is much of fiction. Rai productions contemporary about saints, popes, politicians and the like, for a reason that has nothing to do with actors or the presence of production, but goes back to the mythopoeia mentioned above: the scripts were not written in order to offer a universal message (however simplified and perhaps trivial) starting with a particular story, but they tried, with varying results, to create hagiographies. The main characters are always good and right, there are almost no antagonists, the nuances disappear. American productions, even the most didactic ones, never become melodramatic: presidents, captains of industry, soldiers, journalists can be written as impeccable heroes, perhaps glossing over this or that detail, but they always have an antagonist. path to the final battle. These are the basic rules of mythology, Campbell’s thousand-faced hero.

We can’t bring all this into our cinema, except with great effort: the only ones who have fully learned the lesson are the British and, to some extent, the French, coincidentally two nations that emerged morally victorious from the Second World War. . There is no shortage of material in our country, but we cannot find the right cultural and artistic tone. The history of Italy, far and near, has been explored by local filmmakers, often with citizenship like Francesco Rosi, Elio Petri and film giants like Gian Maria Volonte, but in any case it is very difficult to classify such works as Mattei case, men against AND All Way in the context of popular cinema accessible to everyone.

More recently, Marco Tullio Jordana tried (The best youth remains the only attempt at narrating the great national novel of the post-war period) and Bellocchio with his dyad (good morning night And Exterior Night) dedicated to Aldo Moro, but always with very authorial results, almost bordering on symbolism (the President of the District of Columbia carries a cross surrounded by his fellow party members). So the topic is not so much about the qualities of the actors or our directors (Servillo and Favino are world famous themselves), but rather our ability to confront ourselves with who we are and who we were in a less pompous, perhaps more naive manner. Thus, scriptwriting is able to speak even to an audience not so familiar with the cultural characteristics of our country.

We need to learn how to write biopics not like school subjects, but using the canons and tools of thrillers, detectives and action films. What is it after all Oppenheimer if not a documentary about quantum physics, told in the spirit of film noir? It takes a shot that transcends autofiction once and for all to offer a thoroughly popular cinema, modern in form and content, capable of finally telling an Italy different from the eternal obsession with bourgeois family quarrels, but also more focused postcards with Lambretta. and the orange sunsets of some American cinemas.