The best way for me to describe director Matteo Garrone’ s Gomorra, released in the US as Gomorrah in 2009, is as a cross between Gummo and HBO’s The Wire set in Naple’s organized crime community. Realist in style, and told generally without injecting much drama into its proceedings, Gomorra is a sweeping, complicated look at life in and around a mafia syndicate known as the Camorra. Like Gummo, the characters are presented in a bleak, starkly accurate, almost documentary style that leaves you wishing that people like this didn’t actually exist, but nauseous due to the realization that they must. Like The Wire, Gomorra looks at crime from a multi angled approach, telling the tale of not just the glamorous bosses, but also the child recruit drug runners, the corrupt politicians, and the “legitimate” businessmen whose actions all add to the total view of organized crime life in modern Naples. The plot structure of the film jumps back and forth between five violence soaked stories featuring five different protagonists and how their lives are changed for the worse due to their brushes with criminal life.
The first of the five plotlines sees Gianfelice Imparato playing the character of Don Ciro. He is a sort of moneyman for the mob, going around to the family members of imprisoned gangsters and delivering them allowances. When war (and here gangland violence is always referred to by it’s participants as war) breaks out between Ciro’s clan and another he is forced into the position of deciding whether or not to defect to the other side in order to save himself from death threats. His defection won’t simply be a matter of going to work for the competition, however, in this film every decision has murderous results and Ciro is asked to lead the people he interacts with in his day to day travails into fatal traps. Like most of the stories here, themes of choice and betrayal are evident. To even be anywhere near the world of this film is to offer yourself up to danger and corruption. Gomorra oozes despair and nobody involved is safe.
Salvatore Abruzzese plays Toto in another of the running threads. Toto is 13 years old and a deliveryman of a different sort. Unlike Don Ciro, Toto delivers mere groceries. He lives in a dilapidated, almost post-apocalyptic apartment complex that is all bombed out looking concrete and litter. The Camorra uses the buildings as a base for drug dealing and it doesn’t take long for Toto to get swept up into the world, despite his young age. In Toto, there seems to be an urgency to leave his childish ways behind and venture out into adulthood that motivates his actions. Unfortunately, the only “adult” life that Toto has witnessed from his limited point of view is the life of the gang members around him, and the first chance he gets the boy tries to prove his worth to them. After witnessing a crackdown by the police, Toto picks up a handgun dropped by and gang member and returns it to him in order to prove his loyalty to the pushers that pollute his front porch. One gun shot to the chest initiation later and Toto finds himself in the position of being a pimple faced drug courier. Like Don Ciro, Toto is eventually faced with the decision of remaining loyal to people who have been his friends or betraying them at the behest of his newfound family. The choices he makes, and their subsequent consequences, are the most devastating sequences of the film and really hammer home what a nihilist dog eat dog world it is that we’re being presented with.
The third storyline that is weaved throughout documents the attempted rise of a couple of teenaged gangster wannabes named Marco (Marco Macor) and Ciro (Ciro Petrone). The boys are brash and dangerous, arrogant and ignorant. They push out their chests and quote lines from Scarface, showing no signs of fear or reverence toward the dangerous world that they are attempting to enter. After finding a cache of Camorra owned weaponry, the duo decide to steal the guns and start to pull off their own robberies. Before making their move, they first decide to practice their technique with the high caliber weapons by taking them to a waterfront and spraying thousands of rounds into the distance, sloppily, without discipline, and clad only in their underwear. The scene, for me, was reminiscent of one in Gummo, where two young boys shoot the rabbit-boy Christ figure of the film with toy guns while spitting a series of profanity laced tirades that it’s clear their young minds don’t even fully understand. Marco and Ciro talk about how stupid the Dons in charge of the local crime scene are and how easily they will be overtaken, but we never buy into their braggadocios attitudes, and a sense of dread falls over their decision to not heed the gangsters warnings and return the weapons. Theirs becomes a cautionary tale of youthful exuberance run amok without any systemic structure or authority figure present to take charge of things. Marco and Ciro make their rash decisions based on avarice rather than ambition, and in an American gangster film one might imagine that the narrative would follow a more successful, romantic path for the two characters. Here we are presented with no such glowing, phony presentations of criminality.
A successful tailor of designer clothing named Pasquale played by Salvatore Cantalupo serves as the fourth of five protagonists. Unhappy with the way he is treated by his boss, Pasquale decides to take a second job training migrant Chinese workers to sew, I would imagine, knockoff designer gowns. The conflict inherent in his decision is that his work is funded and controlled by the Camorra and defecting to a rival company is a dangerous proposition that leads Pasquale to taking rides to his new job traveling in the trunk of a car, out of the site of anyone that his perceived betrayal might offend. Pasquale’s story works as a nice contrast to those of Don Ciro and Toto. Where they are faced with decisions that ask them to betray their current acquaintances by the mafia, Pasquale is conversely making the decision to betray the mafia and remain loyal to his professional ideals. When contrasted, the multiple plotlines begin to create an ethos of inevitability that runs throughout the film as a whole. All of the tales discussed so far end in brutal violence, and it begins to appear that no matter what choice the characters make, things will end very badly for someone.
The last of the tales is the least violent and the one set least closely to the drug and gun heart of the Camorra’s criminal world. Roberto (Carmine Paternoster) is a young professional trying to make his way in the world of waste management. His new mentor Franco, played by Toni Servillo, runs his business corruptly; making shady deals with Mafioso types to dump dangerous toxic waste in illegal places. Once things go wrong and people are hurt Franco’s nature becomes even more clear as he continues to cover the incidents up, replaces the injured workers with children who won’t complain, and brokers deals to get even more barrels of toxic gunk illegally disposed of. Roberto watches most of the proceedings completely silent, his reactions playing only subtly over his face. The decision he faces is whether or not he wants to continue down this path toward success, but corruption. The businesslike, relatively non-violent thrust of this story’s plot plays in a clear contrast to the rest of the film. It might be relevant to think about the choice Roberto makes, how it differs from the choices of the other characters in the film, and what the consequences to all of these choices are. A lot of questions of morality, loyalty, criminality, are at play here, and all color the consequences of violent acts. Much of the fun of watching the film is in trying to suss out how it feels about the whole thing and what it is that it might be trying to tell us.
What I liked most about Gomorra is how it broke away from the cookie cutter mold that most of Hollywood’s gangland movies can be placed inside of. Not only does it treat violence differently, it presents it differently a well. None of the action here is cinematic. It’s sudden, confusing, often coming from off screen and invading the story you’re following with brutal, immediate consequences. The gunfights aren’t choreographed or used to provide suspense and thrills. They happen as results of the character’s choices, plain and simple. Instead of the melodramatic, emotionally leading scores of modern American films, Gomorra often uses complete silence to underscore its big moments and tragedies. Nothing here is meant to manipulate your reactions; you are left to take in what is being presented and decide for yourself how you feel about it. The camera is often pulled back into wide shots during outdoor scenes, giving the viewer the feel of being a detached observer to the story, rather than kinetically involved. This adds to the pseudo documentary presentation, lending weight to the story by not allowing you to become too involved in things in an escapist manner. Conversely, many of the indoor scenes become cramped and claustrophobic. The camera is never set back behind an invisible wall and you get the feeling that these things are really happening and the camera isn’t supposed to be there. The acting is pitch perfect from top to bottom. No one performance stands out over another due to everything feeling so natural and confessional. You forget that you are watching performances and start to think that you’re just watching people. At least some of the credit for that has to be given to Garrone. He appears to be a director that knows what he wants from his actors and is able to successfully steer them in the proper direction.
Despite it’s drastic departure from American crime films and it’s decision to present things coldly and without cinematic flair, Gomorra is able to succeed as a film because it also manages to stay entertaining while taking an artier approach to it’s subject matter. Often in these multiple story thread narratives you can’t help but enjoy one or two of the plots more than the others, and perhaps you even find yourself groaning when the focus goes back to one that isn’t working for you. I got none of that here. Every one of the vignettes was engaging from start to finish and I became invested in all of the characters’ eventual fates by the end of the film. Gomorra did for me what no other crime film has been able to in quite a while; it didn’t just manage to keep me entertained, it also presented me with something new, and gave me some metaphysical cud to chew on. I highly recommend giving it a try if you’re finding yourself bored with all the cops and robbers shoot ‘em ups that keep getting churned out in this country.
