Yesterday was another wild ride; I went to the press conference for E’ Stato Il Figlio, saw the movie later in the day, and topped it all off by getting into an angry shouting match in my very best Italian with a guy who accused me of cutting the line at a restaurant. It was an odd, out of body experience and I must say I’m much less anxious about my Italian competency when I’m yelling at someone.
At the press conference I stupidly passed on a translator and listened to director Daniele Cipri’ and stars Toni Servillo and Giselda Volodi talk about the film. I’m not going to lie and tell you I understood every word, but I will say that there was a lot of gushing from everyone, from Cipri’ saying how lucky he was to have gotten Servillo for the project, Giselda, saying how lucky she felt to be working with Servillo, and from Servillo about how great the film is.
And it is. Great. Brian and Lauren said it’s the best movie they’ve seen, Italian or otherwise, in a long time.
It’s the story of a poor family from the slums of Palermo; the father, Nicola, makes his living scavenging for scrap metal and his son and the grandpa work with him. His wife, Loredana, played by Giselda Volodi, takes care of the household that also includes the grandmother, played by Aurora Quattrocchi and a beloved daughter who, for many reasons, seems like the family’s hope for the future.
The dad, played by Toni Servillo, has the weight of the world on his shoulders, and the worrying all alone, or so it seems to him, about the day-to-day making ends meet is, figuratively if not literally killing him. His father is old and not as able as he once was to do the strenuous labor, and his son is a strange kid who is not at all ambitious and doesn’t seem to feel any urgency to help provide for the family.
When the daughter is killed by a mafioso bullet meant for her cousin, the family is thrown into deep and desperate mourning, lessened only by the news that they are owed compensation from the government, given when an innocent victim is killed by Mafia violence. The money, which seems at first a gift from God, slowly becomes a curse, and it will be up to everyone who sees this movie to decide for himself the level of irony in the film’s title: E’ Stato Il Figlio – It Was The Son.
Cipri’ gets everything right in this movie; the cast is perfect, and Toni Servillo, an already accomplished actor (Il Divo, Gomorra) gives his best work to date. Giselda Volodi, known to Americans for her lesser roles in Silvio Soldini’s Pane e Tulipani and Agata e la Tempesta, is stunning as the devastated mother who, in the end, does what she has to do to save her family.
And the very complicated story is expertly told and shows us precisely what were the circumstances that led up to the family’s tragic downfall. In the end we’re left with lots of information but one big question. Was it the son?
When a family who can barely put meat on the table buys a fancy car and when the son, already not the family favorite, puts a dent in that car, what happens is nothing less than a Greek tragedy.
If this one doesn’t make it to the US I can not express how pissed off I will be.
I Love Italian Everything 