Gomorrah

[bore]

Decided to continue my efforts to revive this board, and my series of overly long rambling posts about italian politics via a film with something on Gomorrah, a film about the Campanian Mafia.

It is easy to assume that anything worth saying about mafiosi has already been said. And if you decided to watch Gomorrah anyway, after being greeted in the first scene by a stylised gangland hit in a tanning salon accompanied by a brash pop song your initial concerns might feel vindicated. But in this case first impressions are misleading. Gomorrah is an adaption, unusually, of not just a non fiction book but one that is also not a narrative. Instead of being the study of a mafioso or mafiosi or even an event Robert Savioano’s book (which has sold over 10 million copies and condemned its author into a life of permanent police protection) is a study of a whole system, and the film sees director Matteo Garrone grappling, largely successfully, ethically and technically to be faithful to this vision.

The technical barriers are clearer. Because any attempt to depict an entire society must be polyphonic Garrone chooses to tell 5 distinct, non overlapping stories, and with a run time of less than 150 minutes these are necessarily less character than case studies. The backdrop of most of them are the Vele (so called because its buildings resemble ships) and places like it, enormous brutalist housing estates constructed on the edge of Napoli in the postwar period as slum clearance and rapidly abandoned by the authorities to be run almost wholesale by organised crime. Each of the 5 stories are chosen specifically to highlight a specific facet of the Camorra’s effect as an institution, the institution (it is notable how no other institutions appear in the film, for the residents of these estates there are no police, no churches and no schools) on the people who have to live with it, and who happens to be on top of that at any given point in time makes no real difference, its the internal logic of the institution that dictates its actions.

The ethical problem, to make a film worthy of the bravery of Savoiano, is more challenging, and the solution, as Garrone himself recognises, is murkier. The principal avenue for exploration of this are the wannabe gangsters Mario and Ciro. Young Turks aiming to overthrow the current mafia establishment are not in themselves a novel plot but what is original are the way their desires are exclusively expressed and validated through the medium of these gangster classics- our first acquaintance with them is of them re enacting the final scene of Scarface and the film’s thumbnail is of them firing their guns not in a fight in anger but in their underwear at a deserted river park because they think its cool - their path serves a metacommentary on the moral responsibility of gangster films. Since the godfather, the primary critique of which has been glamorisation as exemplified by its popularity within the mob (a memorable motif in the sopranos) each generation of serious gangster works has aimed to be less stylised and more pitilessly accurate and therefore, considering what accuracy involves, less glamorising.

This realism however has been achieved by getting tight with some very savoury people  (and also is perhaps why every almost every character in a mob film below the role of leading man seems to be portrayed by someone who is not really acting, just being themselves), perhaps reaching its apex in Casino, where the former gangster Frank Culotta plays a hitman who undertakes a fictionalised version of a murder he himself committed in real life. And this no less applies to Gamorrah, a film of pitiless realism in which all but a couple of the characters are played by amateur actors from the neighbourhoods that they are filmed in, the lines spoken in such strong dialect that it is incomprehensible to italians, let alone foreigners. Garrone may or may not have paid the real life Camorra 20,000 to film in its neighbourhoods, but there can be little doubt about the on the run camorristi who was identified to the police by inmates during a screening held in prison, or that the editors of its wikipedia page  feel it necessary to includes a subsection for all the actors who have since been arrested.

Perhaps this is the cost of doing business, but what it does reveal is that plenty of real life Camorristi do not feel the film portrays them poorly. They may even be right, the philosophers that state that it is inevitably cheapening to fictionalise evil may be right, no matter how careful your approach is the action of story telling may be intrinsically biased in favour of the criminal. In this light I think it is notable that the film that Mario and Ciro quote is the most brash, both the least realistic and the one that least needs the identification of the viewer with the protagonist, Di Palma’s Scarface.  There is nothing subtle about it, no one but a moron can mistake Tony Montana for anything like a real life figure. But that is of course what Ciro and Mario do. Here is the synthesis that Garrone reaches- it is in fact impossible to make a gangster film that gangsters will not like, since you will portray cruel characters and for them, after all, it is the cruelty that is the attraction. But there is nothing that can be done with this information, you can not look at these two stupid, cruel men, and want them as the arbiters of art.

The other 4 stories in Gomorrah feature protagonists who are struggling to live within the system, not to break into it. The most complicit of these is Don Ciro, a middle aged, middle-ranking camorristi whose job it is each week to deliver the money to those in the gang who can no longer earn it -the aged and those killed or imprisoned in the line of duty- and their families. Incongruously given his membership of this brutal gang he actually seems to derive pleasure from his caring duties and the opportunity for social interaction it provides, at one point even diverting his schedule to assist one of his clients in plugging a leak in her kitchen. When war breaks out - the details of this are not explained, but crucially, for the purpose of the film it is not necessary to explain them.- Ciro is immediately put into danger, those families loyal to his established faction within the Vele still need to be paid, but the neighbourhood as a whole is controlled by the secessionists. Caught in this Catch 22, Ciro flails about, he begs his boss to be taken off his assignment, he rushes his rounds and starts to wear a ludicrously insufficient bullet proof vest, and when caught by the secessionists, he immediately offers to switch sides. Quite understandably they don’t want him, and instead demand he betrays those soldiers who bring him his money, which inevitably he does, and so he ends the film at the sight of a massacre, bruised but not dead, friendless but alive. It is fair to say that Ciro is not a good man - he is a member of the camorra-  and not even a noble one -he is a pathetic coward who is quite willing to betray others to save himself- but it is also clear that he is not a pathological criminal. Born in another time and place, he could have been a perfectly productive member of society, a bank manager or accountant, and this is the point. It is estimated that in 2008, the year Gomorrah came out, that the four main criminal groups in italy (which in addition to the neapolitan camorra are the calabrian ndrangheta, the sicilian cosa nostra and the puglian sacra corona unita) turned over 130 billion dollars a year, and you can not run a business of that scale and sophistication with some local goons, you also need thousands of smart, educated professionals who would never dream of committing murder themselves. Viewing the mafia as consisting solely of those who carry its guns makes about as much sense as interpreting the church as its clergy.

The story of Toto develops this theme of powerlessness with an air of even greater tragedy. Toto is a 13 year old who helps his single mother (the father is in prison) with deliveries from her corner shop, including to Maria, the mother of his best friend (who in the one example of overlap in the film, also receives support from Ciro - her husband is also in jail). Dreaming of escaping his mundane penurious existence, he seizes his opportunity when he spots a camorista discard his gun and drugs while fleeing the police, and returns it to his crew as an in. He barely gets to enjoy his new status before the war comes, and his secessionist crew is attacked, leaving one of its members dead, in broad daylight. Regrouping, his older colleagues decide that someone in the established faction must pay, and select, because of her husband, Maria- who has just stopped receiving support from Ciro because her son has joined the secessionists, an example the impossibility of successful appeasing these people - demanding Toto lures her into the street, which, faced with their observation that one can either be with them or against them, he has little choice but to accede to.  It is tempting to see this as merely a reflection on the grooming that supplies a steady flow of cannon fodder for the camorra, but though Toto’s story is this, it is also not so dissimilar from the arcs of the adults. What unites, to a greater or lesser extent, Toto, Maria and Ciro to each other and to almost everyone else in the Scampia is not just a social system but their lack of agency within that. They all find themselves in the midst of a war that they can not influence, Ciro can not contradict his boss, Toto is barely a child and as such can not dispute his crews decisions, Maria  is a target from both sides because of her relations. Of course, every society has structures beyond its members control, that is what society means, but in the Scampia almost no one has any control, and the costs of rebelling are so very high.

These two stories of Don Ciro and Toto, the most frequently returned to stories in the film, are in a sense the most classical. They touch on themes-  initial attraction, powerlessness, betrayal- that are the basic material of most mafia films, and their protagonists are, more or less, figures within the institution. This does not apply however to the stories of the idealistic graduate Roberto and the expert tailor Pasquale, which do the most to fulfil the promises made in adapting Savioiano’s text. Here Garrone explores the systemic nature of the Camorra, not just in the no go communities it governs but in the whole of society.

Pasquale is an expert tailor who works in a grey market factory, their practices and products are legitimate, but their boss relies financially on the local camorra, who thus have an interest in their continued success. This provides an important insight into organised crime’s economic role. In Campania there is not a simple bifurcation between legitimate and illegitimate businesses, the Camorrah are not merely a self contained, albeit large retailer of illicit substances, they are an insurance company and a lender of last resort, in other words a bank, the economic institution that others rely on. And in regions with the endemic poverty of the mezzogiorno (which had in 2019 a youth unemployment rate of 46%, compared to only 18% in veneto) there are a lot of other businesses that at some point seem to face no choice but to turn to these people. Pasquale’s life is initially insulated from these decisions, he is the lead tailor, not the manager. But there can be no insulation from these people, and when Pasquale’s night job teaching his expertise to a factory run and staffed by east asian immigrants -that is, a direct rival- is discovered the camorra protects the investment by massacring the competition while Pasquale watches on. When Iavorrone, Pasquale’s boss, who though he may now regret his choices after all turned to the only people who will keep his staff employed and their families fed,  turns up at the hospital to talk to the wounded man, instead of gratitude for his intercession he is greeted with contempt, and Pasquale leaves his job to become a lorry driver. His story concludes months later, where on a screen at a rest stop he sees an oblivious Scarlett Johansson at a red carpet event wearing a dress he has made.  Such is the reward for making the right decision. There can be no doubt about the injustice of this situation, the moral strength of Pasquale and the lack of any recompense.  But I think it is a mistake to see this as the only message. As long as standing up to the camorra requires supernumerary courage, their grip on society is tight. There can be no long term solution that asks for heroism on the part of Iavorrone.

The story of Roberto is perhaps the most audacious, and the most relevant to most of the audience of a film like this, all the more so because it involves no violence, no mention of the camorrah at all. Roberto is a graduate whose first job is as an assistant to the high flying businessman Franco, played by Toni Servillo, who he is proud to introduce to his doctor father. We initially see Roberto accompany Franco to meetings in the great cities of the north, venice and milan - organised crime, thought of as the product and responsibility of poorer areas, is in fact central to crimes committed by the supercilious rich on the poor. Here the talk is scrupulously polite, the discussion euphemistic. The clients have waste that need to be disposed of, Franco can do so. It is indistinguishable from the experience of hundreds of thousands of graduates around the world - though this should prompt reflection in the other direction as well, for how many comfortable office workers are exporting poison to the developing world?- but the results are very different.

In some sense Franco is more honest, since he personally organises the bringing about of this misery, which we see as the action shifts to the disposal. When a toxic barrel spills and Franco refuses to ring an ambulance the truck drivers down tools, but without missing a beat an army of children appear to complete the job. Later, at a meeting with one of the families who own the land, the patriarch of whom is dying from a cancer brought on by their deal with the devil, we see them seeking funds to pay for treatment, not by begging but instead offering even more of their land to the syndicate. Roberto, given a box of peaches by the grandmother on the way out, finally cracks when Franco asks him to dispose of these rotten fruits of the poisoned earth at the side of a deserted road. Roberto gets out, but can not get back in, he quits his job because he can not continue to poison the earth. Franco defiantly declares that camorrista like him are why Italy could enter the EU, that the only job Robert can now get is making pizzas, and drives off.

The ties of Italy’s politicians to organised crime are well known, and by no means a matter of history- the  camorra’s waste disposal model has been known since at least 1991, when the truck driver Mario Tamburrino appeared at an emergency department after being blinded transporting waste from Piedmont to Campania, the health effects have been known since at least 2004 when a paper in the Lancet revealed that in 3 Campanian comunes dubbed the triangle of death cancer rates were twice as high, yet more than 10 million tonnes have been dumped since Tamburrino’s blinding, and 8 years after the Lancet paper an estimated 30% of total rubbish in the region was handled by the Camorra. It is little wonder then that Franco sounds so confident, so impregnable. And yet his words serve as a challenge, the challenge of the film as a whole. Pasquale, Don Ciro, Toto and Roberto have nothing in common, not in background, character or morals, except that they end up almost powerless in the face of the all pervading system. There is no immediate solution to the problems described in the film, but then it is adapted from a non fiction book, and in real life the ending has not been written. We are left with the image of Roberto, laden with poisoned fruit and not sure of his location, setting out on the long journey home.