|
A multilayered look at several lives affected by the Neapolitan 'mafia', the Camorra, Gomorra is the antithesis to the glorification organized crime has received in American popular culture. This film is incredibly bleak, and in a way reminded me of The Wire in its depiction of institutional failure and a society that is hopelessly fragmented. Gomorra follows five plot threads; a boy who is just beginning to rise in the ranks of the Camorra, a tailor who undertakes an extra job teaching Chinese sweatshop workers against the interests of the mob, a middleman responsible for doling out money to the families of dead or imprisoned gangsters, an apprentice to an unscrupulous land developer, and a couple of wannabe thugs who discover a cache of weapons. Although the acting and editing is superbly done, I felt that the film fumbled in its execution. None of the five threads interact with one another, so we are in effect watching five shorts. Three of them are well done; two aren't. We are never given an insight into the characters' motivations, instead treated to a kind of documentary minimalism of several long shots of just their faces, reminding me a lot of Gus van Sant films. The stories of the boy gradually slipping into the criminal world, the middleman and the apprentice are done well in this fashion. The first two contain a lot of tension - I was certain the kid was going to get killed when he put on the vest - the middleman story almost unbearably so. With the boy it becomes apparent early on that he's a pragmatist, so that you sigh with relief when he returns the gun to the gang until you realize he's now enjoined with criminals. This eventually conflicts with his sense of honesty, and you get to see how a fundamentally good person becomes irrevocably tangled in the underworld. The story of the apprentice is a kind of reflection, and we get to see the only truly positive outcome in the film where he manages to extricate himself from that life. The other two didn't work for me. If anything they were overexplained; the tailor's story seems like the odd one out of the film as it doesn't really add anything. He's poor; he wants money; he works with the Chinese; he gets a 'message' from the mob and loses the dexterity of his hands; he backs off and becomes a truck driver. I guess it's a tale of how beautiful things get ruined by impersonal forces but like I said, didn't work for me. The last story of the two wannabes is strange. It definitely had the most emotional impact; at the end of the film you feel like a sledgehammer has hit you (haven't felt that since Requiem for a Dream) but at the same time I felt relief that they were dead. Clearly you feel sympathy for them as they want to rise above the dreariness that's depicted in their introductory scene, but they gently caress up so much they seem literally retarded in their handling of the crisis. Eventually I just got annoyed at them and wanted it to end. Great sense of realism overall, but ultimately leaves you with an overbearing sense of depression and hopelessness. 3.5/5
|
#
?
Mar 16, 2009 01:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 08:14 |
|
|
While I'm not much into Mafia movies in general, I do tend to like critical darlings, so I was sure I'd like this. But for the most part, I didn't like it very much. I found it very hard to follow the story and keep track of who most of the characters were (the worst part was spending most of the movie getting confused between whether I was looking at the tailor guy, or the other quiet, balding, late-middle-aged male character). I don't feel like I would have enjoyed it a great deal more if I had understood everything that was happening; neither the narratives or the characters were very compelling. There were lots and lots of scenes that consisted of young Italian men talking about someone who needed to be killed, or whether they should be killed, or why they should be killed, or who should do the killing, and providing no reason at all why I should give a poo poo who was killed or when or where or why or how or by whom. And of course, because I didn't care, my attention would wander and I'd stop reading the subtitles and then I'd become even more confused by what was happening. For a movie with so much violence, it's not even particularly exciting. Some of the mystery characters would be doing something apparently benign, and then a bunch of guys would come in and shoot everybody quickly, and maybe they'd spend a minute threatening to shoot whomever they hadn't already shot, and then they would leave. This happened many times. I just kept comparing it in my head to City of God or The Wire, the latter of which also tends to be extremely confusing on first viewing and yet still manages to be compelling because even if you don't fully understand who these characters are, you can enjoy their dialogue and their interaction hints at their respective statures and their relationships to each other and you can understand their struggles on a human level. Both of those are WAY, WAY better than Gomorra. It's not like I think Gomorra was a total piece of poo poo. I was moderately engaged by several of the storylines and characters that I could keep track of, although even those weren't especially textured; they were just kind of satisfactory. There were some good sequences and a few bits of really notable cinematography. 2/5
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2009 04:31
|
|
|
Gomorra is a movie that strives to be a documentary. However it is not entertaining like a movie or informative, like a documentary. The only 2 characters I was interested in was the sweatshop worker and the toxic waste apprentice. Since these aren't areas covered in previous films but they get the lightest treatment in this film. The focus on the 2 teenagers who thought they could up the status-quo was unbelievable. The director takes great pains to show how the mafia effects everyone's day to day living (like killing people in broad daylight in front of a crowd), but these 2 idiots don't take into consideration for a moment and the consequences of their actions, even after they are roughed up with guns pointed at their heads. The cinema had 15 people watching the same session as me, 3 walked out and the guy in the asile opposite me was sleeping by the end credits. Pros: -unflinching look at the mafia -Italy like you have never seen it Cons: -Boring -unsurprising -the text epilogue is more informative about the mafia's reach in society than the entire film 1.5/5
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2009 17:41
|
|
|
I thought it was a good movie. It dragged on for too long in many scenes but overall I found the subject matter to be interesting enough to keep me fully entertained. 3/5
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2009 01:08
|
|
