Gomorrah

Italian director Matteo Garrone's riveting Gomorrah has caused a sensation since its debut in competition at Cannes a year ago. Adapted from Roberto Saviano’s book, the movie is a fluid and novelistic portrait of power, corruption and the internecine black market dealing of the Camorra families of Naples

 

Garrone, Saviano (who had to go into hiding following the book’s publication) and several other writers worked on adapting the material into a script. They intertwine five different stories of corruption and amorality that provides an alternately revealing and frightening moral and personal exploration of the hierarchal power structures, the ritualistic behavior, codes and actions.

 

The ellipsis between fiction and documentary is rarely more transparent. Garrone individuates the large ensemble cast through telling expressions and subtle body movements. The documentary realism elevates the work, providing both heft and nuance. Most of the action unfolds in a developing housing market in a vacant and dreary suburb of Naples.

 

Martin Scorsese officially presented the movie’s theatrical release. The movie is available on IFC’s on-demand platform.

 

During one of his recent trips to America, Garrone and I talked about the movie, his art and his manner of working.

 

 

 

 

Light Sensitive: From the assassination inside the parlor that opens the film, you give almost no traditional sense of exposition, of who the different characters are, or their loyalties or how they’re connected. The effect throws you into these lives and people, and everything feels unexpected. We’re outsiders, but we get completely absorbed into this world.

 

Matteo Garrone: When we wrote [that] scene, the clan killing each other on the inside, we wanted to show the war starts on the inside. We didn’t want to give too much information. We wanted more emotion. The audience has more of an emotional experience about the film. So probably we prefer to show from action and develop an image. It’s like the classic scene of the barbershop, in the gangster shop, where they kill; it’s a same scene of the classic movie but [we do it] the modern way.

 

LS:  I didn’t recognize any of the actors, but there’s such an incredible sense of verisimilitude and realism in the bodies, the faces, the physical expressions. How did you find most of these people?

 

MG: The movie really is anthropological; it’s all about the face, the body; what’s very important is to rewrite, to try and change the imagination the audience has of the criminal, to show how the criminal is different that what we usually see in the movies. Typically [the criminal] is more glamorous, nice and pretty. For us it was quite interesting to show the real life, how they look and act. I cast also in prisons, in the company of theater prisons, because I had a friend who worked in prisons twenty years ago and I asked him about good actors who are now out of jail. I used to be an actor, I worked in theater, and so [the casting] was really a mélange of person and character.

 

LS: I’ve read other interviews where you’ve discussed the impact of Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan holds for you. That connection seems implicit in your own film.

 

MG: Rosselini doesn’t judge. He shows the character and he’s close to the character; he doesn’t tell you what is good and what is bad. From a character he shows a culture; from a very particular story, he told about a country in the Second World War and that’s the most important lesson for me. The material was so strong that we didn’t want to put any comment. We didn’t want to emphasize. We just wanted to show and be advisable as directors; we just want to show what goes on; there is autobiographical construction, style of reportage, or documentary, feeling of the audience being there on the inside.

 

LS: I presume those aren’t sets you built, or recreations, that you actually shot in the actual places, particularly those housing projects. Given how the influence and fear the Camorra has in these areas, how were you able to convince them they should allow you to shoot there?

 

MG: All the families have moved. It was like a studio, it was like completely empty; this building is part of the symbol of Scampia. This location was important, a kind of library that was also very claustrophobic. You see the man who brings money to the clan and the young boys who go into college, connected with rule, with order; the opposite of the story of the other two young boys that idolize Tony Montana [Al Pacino’s Cuban gangster in Brian De Palma’s Scarface remake]. Their story is a story of anarchy and freedom; it was important it was located in open space, sense of freedom; the locations are very important to show something more about the character.

 

LS: In shaping the material, was the final form achieved in the editing with the cross cutting and the parallel action, or is that how it was arranged from the script.

 

MG: We wrote and re-wrote the script many times. I re-wrote the script on the territory where I went to make the preparations for the shooting. We were always changing something, even during the shooting. We also changed when we were editing. We saw it with the screenwriters and went back to shoot again and then did some more editing. It was a long process to get the final result. I always use to work like this. I used to save money on the budget from the beginning because I knew it was important to be able to go back and shoot more after the editing.

 

LS: Roberto Saviano, the novelist, has gotten a great deal of notoriety and attention in Italy because of the book. How receptive was he in having the material made into a film?

 

MG: When I met Roberto, it was the summer 2006. The book was just published and he was completely free at that moment. It was not the first book about Camorra. I started to work on this project because I found the book powerful, I felt the characters in the book were different from the normal Mafia movies.  I talked with him, and I said to him that I was interested in making a movie, but I didn’t want to make a movie with names or, like journalists. I said let’s start to write the screenplay at the end of the September.

 

That was the beginning of his problems [the threats against him and his family]. He attacked a big boss. He started to come to my house to work on the script and he always came with police protection. Now, the movie and the book became very explosive. The success of the movie in Cannes and the world, the government couldn’t ignore that; they declared war to the Camorra; now [Saviano’s book is] a symbol of the fight against Camorra. There are a lot of people in Italy that are supporting him The police found the Camorra wanted to put a bomb on the way where Roberto goes with the car.

 

 

LS: Stylistically, the film has an incredible visual fluency. I was particularly impressed with the photo realistic style of Marco Onorato, your cinematographer. How did you two work together in creating the visual patterns.

 

MS: Marco is my stepfather. He’s been with my mother for 34 years. He’s a very nice person and we’re used to working together. We decide all together; I came from photography, so I know quite well that part of the world. We wanted also in the photography to be aware of the light. We used not much light and very natural, like we have done with all the other things, don’t cut too much the scene. With the music, we didn’t use classic soundtrack. We used the music from inside, the voice of the drug dealer, always from inside.

 

With Marco, the work of the photography starts from the script. When we write, we write trying to tell the story with image, so it’s like a silent movie. I wanted to work on this project because I have some visual imagination. When I read the book of Saviano, I found it visually powerful.

 

LS: Also I understand you operate the camera yourself.

 

MG: I did the camera movement. When I shoot, I like to invent always with the film: the actor invents, every [music] or dialogue track is different from another. I follow the actor, like a dance almost. It’s very important to be there in the right movie, at the right time. With the camera, you have to be there, at the precise moment. If you have to stop and talk with the cameraman, it’s too late. Sometimes I invent. The actors suggest an idea without being cautious of how to shoot. It’s a very creative moment for me.

 

LS: In The Godfather films, the family structure and the division of labor and the social interaction all become a meditation on America capitalism and free enterprise. With your film, it feels like a terrifying glimpse at the dark side of globalization being practiced locally.

 

MG: I appreciate that. This was the most important part of the film, the idea of something happening in a local place but also to talk about the world. It’s not just a problem of Naples, a metaphor of something more universal and global.

 

LS: You just turned 40, which is young for a filmmaker. What kind of things do you envision doing next.

 

MG: It’s quite difficult. I haven’t had time to think of a new project; the Gomorrah left me a desire to work immediately. It’s a movie that reinforced me. I hope to start quickly. In this period, I have to travel a lot and I have to help the movie.