After three long years of waiting from his latest feature film “They”, Interspersed only with the release of his TV series The New Pope, Paolo Sorrentino finally returns to the big screen with It was the Hand of God, which we will analyze today in our review. This time the director will give us a intimate and autobiographical story on one of the summers that most marked him, between a tragic event and goals from Maradona.
Toni Servillo returns to lend a hand to his friend the director again this time, but he gives up the place of protagonist to the young man Filippo Scotti – which gives us a great performance in the role of Fabio Schisa – which in all respects will be the spiritual alter ego that the director has decided to use to tell this cross-section of his past. The film will be available on Netflix from December 15, but starting from 24 November it will also be possible to retrieve it through a distribution in cinemas, which we highly recommend you do, as it is a work to be experienced on the big screen.
The hand of God
Few times in history has a single figure had the power to raise the spirit of an entire city in a single cry. Many might come to mind Greek philosophers or revolutionaries from South America, but when it comes to football, only one person can come to mind: Diego Armando Maradona. The first rumors that spoke of his possible arrival in the Campania capital were almost mocked, given that “a champion of his caliber would never have stooped to arrive in Naples”. But reality sometimes surpasses even the greatest of dreams, and upon its arrival the citizens looked at it almost as if it had been the apparition of the Madonna. This precise event happens to our protagonist Fabio Schisa and his brother, who walking through the streets of the city come across the Pibe de Oro, and all around them the city stops. No breath. No chirping or gusts of wind. Even hearts seem to stop before his arrival.
This episode of the transfer market, which defined the whole summer of 1984, will be the spark that will start the events that will accompany all the characters in this work. All the rumors about his possible arrival, about how many now assumed it was certain while others considered them “newsagent’s crap”, will creep into every speech of the Schisa family and will enliven every table. In this review we confirm that the power of It Was the Hand of God is found in this: Sorrentino has finally managed to bring a true Italian family to the screen, in which the viewer not only reflects himself but manages to identify himself so much that it seems to be sitting at the table with them laughing and joking. Here we should therefore also applaud all the actors who took part in the film: from a Toni Servillo who gets better and better every year; to the young man Filippo Scotti that in his debut as a protagonist in the cinema he pierced the screen, winning the deserved award for Best Emerging Actor at the Venice Film Festival; or a great performance from Luisa Ranieri, which brings to the screen the mental instability of Fabio’s aunt.
Sorrentino has finally taken the courage needed to tell one of the most beautiful and tragic moments at the same timei of his past, far from works such as The celebrity or the same They. A film that alternates comedy with drama, scenes of common life with others that are absolutely more grotesque, but always told and directed with the love and sweetness that only a child who remembers his parents can do. This autobiographical portrait of his youth captivates the viewer and accompanies him on the long rollercoaster of emotions that the director himself experienced that summer. All always accompanied by the usual Maradona and his “hand of God” who humiliated England in the world championship won by Argentina in 1986 … just a few months before the tragic accident that will mark Fabietto’s life forever.
Napule is a thousand cultures
Very often we Italians have this bad habit of snubbing our country, whether it is because of the way it is governed that does not reflect our ideas or because of a desire to detach from a reality that has always seemed too narrow to us and maybe escape to destinations far from our home – something that even I myself have unfortunately experienced firsthand. Yet with It was the Hand of God, Sorrentino kidnaps the viewer’s heart and catapults him into one Naples which in effect becomes the third protagonist of history, as we can confirm in the review, detached only a few notches from Maradona and Fabietto. Naples is the constant that holds together all the characters we will meet during the film, making those in room one feel strange nostalgia of those years and of those places now far from today’s reality, despite not even having lived them. The Campania capital thus becomes a subspecies of “locus amoenus”, An isolated and magnificent place, also capable of uniting an entire population in a single cry to celebrate a goal.
But Naples can also make you feel too tight if you are an artist trying to spread his wings and show everyone what he is capable of. This will be exactly what will happen to poor Fabio, chained in a city too far from his dream and that above all makes a terrible memory resurface in his mind, perhaps one of the worst that one could experience at his age. If for the first half the setting is suspended in time, magical and almost fairytale, as the events continue we will undergo the same change of perspective that also happens to the protagonist of the work: if initially the shots were wider, with long panoramas that framed entire glimpses of the sea and the city, in the second half the colors of each shot darken; the narrow alleys and closed environments are the masters and – unlike the first part – the key passages take place at night rather than during the day.
All this, however, can only lead to a really unexpected ending, with one of the most beautiful dialogues seen on the Italian scene in recent years. A long question and answer between Fabio and the director Antonio Capuano, dedicated not only to all those who sooner or later they dream of working in this sector, but more generally also to those who simply love cinema. To those who have something to say and still do not find the courage to shout it loudly to the whole world, leaving out all fear and all second thoughts. And all framed by the Gulf of Naples illuminated by the first rays of dawn.
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