Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone) 2008

I never thought I would get a chance to see this in theaters.  Gomorrah was a movie I was highly anticipating since I saw the previews at Che.  I wrote a small essay on why I wasn’t exactly a fan of gangster movies mainly the glorification of the business and I was hoping Gomorrah was the answer to that.  In short, yes.

Gomorrah follows five different characters/storylines and how they all tie back to the Camorra crime family.  The Camorra crime family is the most powerful crime organization that earns profits probably in the billions and kills more than any other crime family.  One story is about a money carrier who is kind of a social security for mobsters.  He pays benefits to retired members and supports families whose workers are in prison.  Another follows a kid from one of those families who is lured into the drug business his father was arrested for.  Another is about two teens who have aspirations of being the next Scarface but are just punk thugs.  The fourth is about a tailor working for the Camorrah who sells his secrets to Asians and upsets the organization.  The final follows a land dealer and his protege.  The man buys up land from desperate people and uses it to dump toxic waste.  The man assures corporations the dumping is “clean” and offers to take waste for virtually pennies on the kilo.  Obviously the Camorrah has its fingers into everything and is not just about drugs or prostitution.  It is also just a part of life for everyone involved that the Camorrah everywhere.

There really isn’t anyone in this movie that has it made so to speak.  You have retired mobsters living in worse than government assisted housing, the street level dealers are in a war, and even the mid level “made men” aren’t really living that well off.  If I had to liken this movie to anything it would be like Traffic except without any of the melodrama.  It never feels like our emotions are being jerked around.  We are sitting back and just watching the business and the people associated with said business.

The movie is so stand offish and clinical that I’m sure several will find fault with it.  We don’t follow a protagonist and we don’t REALLY get emotionally involved with anyone.  Because its emotionally detached I’m sure people will think they can’t connect with it and therefore makes it “boring”.  Gomorrah is not meant to be a conventional narrative it is like an expose or almost a documentary like re-enactment.  We are immersed in an atmosphere of corruption and an Italy that is rotten to the core.  And even though we are not emotionally invested in the characters does not mean I wasn’t shocked by some of the turns.  I do not want to spoil anything, but there is a scene near the end when I first saw it I was running through all the Hollywood cliches where the scene could have went.  I was thinking of how false the scene was going to be and how they would have screwed it up.  But I was shocked as hell to see where the scene actually went, how it strayed from any Hollywood convention and how honest and true it was.

Gomorrah won the Grand Prix at Cannes and with the competition of last year that says something.  There is next to zero advertising for this movie and I guess I have Martin Scorsese to thank for bringing this movie to the States and giving it a release (however limited it might be).  It will be in contention for the 09 Academy Awards and hopefully it will get more attention because of it.  I am not crowning this movie as better than Godfather or Goodfellas or any of that nonsense.  But this is a fresh approach in a stagnant genre and accomplishes where most movies don’t in not glorifying the mob or the lifestyle.  This will probably be among my favorites along side City of God.