Gomorra
Although many of the “italian
gangster” lifestyle features shown here have an air of familiarity (the garbage
disposal company, the strip joint, the social club, the drug dealing), the
gangsters in Gomorra aren’t what we’re used to seeing in “mafia films”. What with
civilians and gangsters all speaking a heavily-accented Neapolitan dialect, these
gangsters don’t even sound Italian sometimes. Ostentatious displays of wealth are
not the order of the day either (at least, not such that are indicative of the
astoundingly large revenue from illegal activity estimated in the afterword). The
top-boys in this coastal organisation are, for the most part, paunchy and grizzled
senior citizens. As a helpful analogy, think of your grandfather in the latter
stages of a casual beach holiday, add a large handgun that Dirty Harry would
have considered lacking in subtlety and you’ve got the idea.
Many actors play eponymous characters (we
recognise one or two actors from other films, but get the impression that at many are local first-timers, perhaps with first-hand experience of
the film’s topic) and most of the action is apparently filmed on location, primarily
in the shabby monumental housing projects around Naples. Add to this the
Neapolitan pop music that features heavily in the soundtrack and the aforementioned
emphasis on the Neapolitan dialect in the script and we have film whose focus
is squarely on that city. In the impoverished housing complex central to the
story, we have what amounts to an unofficial mini-state, seceded from the
Italian one, with a system of governance, headed by the gangsters, suggestive
of a kind of feudalism. The fact that this fiefdom is apparently the type of
place where some psychotic “knight-errants” can discharge a vast array of
weapons for fun without sanction from the Italian authorities is astonishing, and
the sight of the appartment block transformed into the modern equivalent of a medieval
keep, complete with arsenal and sentries to defend against the Carabinieri, is depressing
and made even more so by the the involvement of children.
The filmmakers disclaim responsibility for any
resemblances between characters and real persons. This reminds us that no
specific person is implicated in illegal activity, despite the documentary sense
which the film derives from it’s location and cast and it’s well-publicised basis
in a recent journalistic investigation by Roberto Saviano. All this makes it
difficult to position the film in our minds : is it a documentary, is it a
dramatisation, can we even use the formulation “inspired by real events”?
Subtle and well-achieved stylings, notably the use of ambient sounds (in
particular, see when a character walks from a basement to street level after
some nastily realistic gunplay), and some devices to enhance the natural
tension achieved by the overall context, place the film as a drama. In that respect,
it works reasonably well. Much more important, both for the viewing
experience and, which is probably the film’s main “purpose”, for helping to
generate publicity for the illegal activity, is it’s basis in fact. It is
strange to say that without this basis the sense of nihilism would be
too much.