Every morning before I check to see what Obama’s doing over here or what the weather is going to be like, I check out MYmovies.it, an amazing movie data base with movie reviews and news, founded by Pino Farinotti. Farinotti is the author of a movie dictionary, and this year he’s added another 400 films for his Il Farinotti 2012. Today on the website he gives us the good news…and the bad, in his opinion, about Italian films.
“There is good news”, he says. “I’m talking about Italian cinema, and we have a title that will define 2011, Nanni Moretti’s Habemus Papam. Paradoxically the news is also bad, since Farinotti feels that the last film this good was also from Moretti, his 2000 La Stanza Del Figlio. (I’d disagree – I loved that movie but it wasn’t the last movie that was as good.)
“But there’s more good news”, says Farinotti. “Checco Zalone. He’s discovered a comic quality that has, if not invented, perfected a code.” He cites something he’d written earlier of Zalone: “The ultimate simplicity is that he knows how to depict important themes with comic parables. If it’s true that everything is political, there’s nothing that is more deserving of a comic parable than the politics of our county, with all of its grotesqueness and the smirks.”
More bad news though, insists Farinotti, because he feels that Italy “lost” at the Venice Film Festival “as usual” – even though Crialese got the Special Jury Prize for Terraferma. The Special Jury Prize is “third place”, in Farinotti’s opinion, and the only real award is the Golden Lion.
There is obviously some truth in what Farinotti says, and yet there is much that he’s ignoring. There are so many actors and directors that are making movies that, while they may not win an academy award, are innovative and show a progressive creativity that I see as good news for Italian cinema. In movies like Francesco Lagi’s Missione di Pace, with its edgy humor, or in a smart, entertaining story-teller like Gianni di Gregorio, there’s a lot of good news. It would help if Italy appreciated and recognized what it has.
I Love Italian Everything 