L’uomo chi verra won the best film award at the David di Donatello Awards (Italy’s national film awards) in 2009. It’s beautifully made and very moving, but also very harrowing: highly recommended – but not for cheerful viewing.
It is a fictionalised account of the terrible events which took place in the village of Marzabotto in the mountains above Bologna in 1944, in which almost 800 people – almost all the inhabitants of the village – were massacred by the Nazis as punishment for their support for the anti-fascist resistance movement (partisans). Although vicious and random killings of Italian civilians by the Nazis were common, this massacre is seen as one of the worst of Nazi crimes in Italy.
The film focuses on the experiences of 8-year-old Martina, who has not spoken since her baby brother died in her arms some time before. At the beginning of the film, Martina’s mother has become pregnant again; the duration of the film’s narrative is the nine months of the pregnancy, during which Martina awaits the arrival of a new sibling whilst observing the increasingly violent and dangerous conflict between fascists and partisans in the village. What becomes of the infant I won’t reveal, but the title of the film (‘The man who will come’, or perhaps metaphorically ‘mankind of the future’) is clearly related to his fate.
It is a fictionalised account of the terrible events which took place in the village of Marzabotto in the mountains above Bologna in 1944, in which almost 800 people – almost all the inhabitants of the village – were massacred by the Nazis as punishment for their support for the anti-fascist resistance movement (partisans). Although vicious and random killings of Italian civilians by the Nazis were common, this massacre is seen as one of the worst of Nazi crimes in Italy.
The film focuses on the experiences of 8-year-old Martina, who has not spoken since her baby brother died in her arms some time before. At the beginning of the film, Martina’s mother has become pregnant again; the duration of the film’s narrative is the nine months of the pregnancy, during which Martina awaits the arrival of a new sibling whilst observing the increasingly violent and dangerous conflict between fascists and partisans in the village. What becomes of the infant I won’t reveal, but the title of the film (‘The man who will come’, or perhaps metaphorically ‘mankind of the future’) is clearly related to his fate.
The film is beautifully shot in remote rural locations in the mountains, and Diritti skilfully avoids the overworked sentimentality of many 2nd world war tragedies. He uses music sparingly; when he does use it, at moments of maximum tension, he avoids the clichés of standard-issue tragic soundtrack. His narrative is oblique at times, especially in the first half of the film, as the viewer is asked to piece together events from the perspective of the young girl. Attention to authentic detail – such as the use of a local dialect which sounds more like Catalan than Italian, and an unsentimental presentation of the life of the rural poor – gives the film an appropriately rough-edged feel which is heightened by the use of local amateur actors. Indeed, in many respects L’uomo che verra feels like the work of an Italian Ken Loach.
Because the focus of the film is on the girl Martina’s experiences, politics remains in the background. We hear the villagers discussing their dangerous position, caught between the fascists and the partisans; we see the brutal violence of many of the Nazis; and we are also made aware of the way in which the partisans endangered civilian life through their actions. There is, however, no extended discussion of the political complexities of the situation. But this is fine: the film is clearly and powerfully about the experience of civilians tragically caught on the front line of the war, and about the purposeless brutality of fascism.
There are fine performances, not least from the girl playing Martina. Martina’s mother is played by Maya Sansa (also seen, for instance, in the excellent films Buongiorno notte (2003) and La meglio gioventu (2003)), and her aunt is played by the wonderful Alba Rohrwacher, who has been in many of the finest Italian films of the last few years (e.g. La solitudine dei numeri primi (2010), Io son amore (2009), Il papa di Giovanni (2008), Mio fratello e figlio unico (2007)). Her father is played by playwright and theatre actor Claudio Casadio.
The film’s ultimate focus – as signalled by its title and its closing scene – is on the future, a future that unfortunately still includes fascism. Some Italian film-makers in the last decade have been doing a good job of illuminating the truth of fascism and confronting Italy’s contribution to it; still, it’s rare to see a film about the Nazis in Italy and the activities of the partisans. For this film, Diritti researched the history in scrupulous detail over the years, examining the testimony of witnesses and survivors and meeting with some of them in order to present something like the raw truth. As he says (in an interview at http://cineuropa.org):
Not just our cinema, but Italy itself has essentially repressed the most heinous chapters [of its history]. It has not come to terms with what was a civil war, albeit an undeclared one. It has preferred to make films on the stereotypes of the Resistance, or else give in to triumphalism, instead of reckoning with the many facets of history, whose memory it is important to keep alive.
Not just our cinema, but Italy itself has essentially repressed the most heinous chapters [of its history]. It has not come to terms with what was a civil war, albeit an undeclared one. It has preferred to make films on the stereotypes of the Resistance, or else give in to triumphalism, instead of reckoning with the many facets of history, whose memory it is important to keep alive.