The Outer World
When I was on my semester abroad at the University of Massachusetts, I studied under an apoplectic old lefty by the name of Milton Cantor. He loved Brits, which meant I generally escaped his rants against contemporary American apathy and ignorance, leaving me free to sit back and watch the show. One of his best set-pieces saw him inveigh against villains, war criminals, and other assorted twentieth century tyrants. “I’m sure they were nice to their wives, or their dogs,” he screamed at us, before listing their crimes.
In other words, the fact that violent thugs might be nice to their families is neither surprising nor interesting. Yet when it comes to the American gangster genre, this is what is supposed to fascinate us. From The Godfather to The Sopranos (which I endured for the first and last time on Friday), American film-makers have found success by exploring the inner-world of the gangster.
This is what makes Gomorrah such a refreshing change. The key word is squalor. It’s everywhere, from the gangsters being gunned down in the (albeit rather predictable) opening scene, to the drab shots of Campania and its disturbingly bleak housing projects which provide the setting for the film. All of this is a far cry from our romantic notions of the Italian south, and even a couple of minutes set in Venice do nothing to relieve the gloom. Then there’s the southern Italian dialect, a harsh babble which seems a million miles away from the sensuous tongue which dominates in the north.
Gomorrah is actually based on a piece of non-fiction, one so explosive that its author was forced underground following threats from the mob, and the plot is sometimes tricky to follow. It’s an ensemble piece, following five different stories in the style of Traffic or Babel, but without the childish need to bring everything together. As we’re so conditioned to expect the ingenious plot device that will explain everything, though, it perhaps becomes harder to appreciate the sustained micro-level intensity of the action.
The film follows five narratives: A haute-couture tailor defying the mob by teaching Chinese immigrants his trade; a pubescent Cristiano Ronaldo lookalike lured into gang action; a young waste-management expert having a crisis of conscience as a result of his work with the Mafia; and a middleman who delivers money to imprisoned gang members’ families. The best thread, however, features Marco and Ciro, two wannabe gangsters schooled in the North American tradition, with fatal delusions of grandeur. In a particularly startling scene, we see them in their underwear, having successfully raided a Comorrah arms-cache, testing out their weapons on an abandoned and grim stretch of water.
Gomorrah won’t be to everyone’s taste. It’s long and sometimes hard to follow and unremittingly squalid, the only musical diversion provided by a visit to a strip-club or a passing car pumping techno. But it tells the simple truth about organized crime, one that is made clear even before statistics come up on screen before the credits to explain the truth behind the fiction (4000 people killed in the last thirty years by the Comorrah; some of their money has been invested in the rebuilding of the Twin Towers). No matter the inner life of gangstas, organized crime is awful, destructive, and anything but romantic. As the people of Naples march against the Mafia, it’s worth applauding the makers of Gomorrah for reminding us of these simple truths.
