Review of Gomorrah (2008) by Julien M — 06 Dec 2009

It's been over a half century since the flood of Italian neorealism took the cinematic world by storm and decades since it seemed to have disappeared. With Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah we don't get a return to form but, rather, a taste of the cinema Italy use to produce. Instead of tackling the subjects in a post-WWII atmosphere, it presents it in an all too real modern day criminal society. This picture takes the glamorized violence and idealized mobster lifestyle which has become a staple of the gangster film genre, and flips it into a realistic depiction of actual events plaguing Italy in the 21st century.

I thoroughly appreciate the film and admire it's vision, but I still felt a large problem lied in its narrative. The multiple stories and seemingly endless characters tended to distract while my lack of emotion toward most of them made me lose a bit of interest. I realize this technique may have been utilized to help the audience focus on the events at hand, but it's what I blame for not being able to become completely enthralled in the story from the start.

Despite the problem I had with the narrative, the film is very well made and is definitely worth a viewing. The setting has a worn beauty to it that brings you into the world the characters are living, while the acting is superb and never throughout the entire runtime did it feel like I was watching an actor perform. The brutally realistic violence may turn some people off, but the depiction is never gratuitous and is undoubtedly necessary for the filmmaker to communicate the story. With everything all added up, the positives definitely outweigh the negatives and I say that Gomorrah is worth seeking out...