American mobster movies are all about the people. The lead characters are emotional, loud and larger than life, and more often than not they’re Al Pacino. They give the most memorable faces to organized crime ““ the faces of people such as Tony “Scarface” Montana and Don Corleone. No one forgets the Godfather.
But despite all the attention it’s gotten over the years, the mafia continues to thrive, virtually untouched. It’s worth asking, then: what could possibly be accomplished by a movie like “Gomorrah”?
An Italian film based on Roberto Saviano’s journalistic novel about the Camorra crime syndicate in Naples and winner of the Grand Prix at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, “Gomorrah” ignores the tradition of boss-based gangster films, choosing instead an entire community as its focal point. If “The Godfather” couldn’t instigate the takedown of the mafia, what good is a film with not a single screen-stealing character?
“Gomorrah” begins with shots of a few unexplained murders, and from there on out the movie seems to be, in many ways, just a long series of montages. Mostly forgettable people drift in and out of a meandering plot that dwells on a number of surprisingly mundane activities for a mobster film: delivering cash, carrying groceries, driving dumptrucks and even sewing. Events and characters are rarely, if ever, explained, clarified or connected to one another. Hierarchies and rivalries are occasionally alluded to in ambiguous terms but never exploited for any measure of dramatic tension.
Of course, all this obscurity seems to be the point, and it’s both good and bad. The film wins authenticity points for resisting sensationalism, but it consequently suffers quite a bit in coherence and entertainment value. Its most enduring characters are, strangely enough, the youngsters; there are times when “Gomorrah” feels like a documentary on the psychological effect of the mafia on the Neapolitan youth. Marco (Marco Macor) and Ciro (Ciro Petrone) make the most lasting impressions as two dorky teenagers who dream of gunfights and holdups, but their story line is intermittent and ultimately unsatisfying. The adults, on the other hand, are for the most part quiet and nameless, and they’re so underwhelming it’s a wonder the mafia ever manages to get anyone killed.
What “Gomorrah” does well, though, is explore those nuances that the Hollywood gangster movies patently refuse to acknowledge. When a man is shot on the sidewalk, it’s not clear who did it, who ordered it or what should be done about it. Gathering at the morgue, friends of the victim decide that they can’t wait for instructions from whatever invisible superior they answer to and target a woman who may have had nothing whatsoever to do with the killing. The film seems to say that the mafia may not be a well-oiled machine and its leaders may not all be gargantuan personalities, but that doesn’t mean it can’t wreak havoc on a huge number of innocent lives.
The closing credits begin with some shocking statistics about the Camorra’s real-life crimes: they are responsible for more murders than any other organization in the world in the last 30 years. But nothing in “Gomorrah” is as poignant or as stunning as those statistics, which is due largely to the film’s insistent anti-sensationalism. The movie deserves praise for its treatment of a real issue as the emergent sum of the actions of real people, but if it wants to make a statement, it might consider getting a spokesperson. I’m thinking Al Pacino.