Five stories set in and around Naples, where the residents' lives are dominated by organised crime outfit, the Camorra. Based on the best-selling non-fiction book by Roberto Saviano.
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, Gomorrah is a compelling re-invention of the Italian mafia movie. Adapted from Roberto Saviano's book of the same name, which sold over 1.2 million copies in Italy alone, Matteo Garrone's film is the very antithesis of Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather trilogy. While the opening scene, a multiple hit in a tanning salon, may suggest otherwise, this is a film that does not set out to glamourise the lives of gangsters.
The film oscillates between five separate stories all touched by the shadowy world of the Camorra, the mafia-like crime organisation which originated in the Naples region. Totò (Abruzzese) is a 13 year-old boy who delivers groceries and becomes enticed by the world of crime after he finds a gun and stash and returns the illicit contraband to the rightful owner. Likewise, Marco (Macor) and Ciro (Petrone) are two foolish young lads with ambitions to take on a boozy local Camorra boss.
Meanwhile, a tailor named Pasquale (Cantalupo) in a mob-funded fashion business secretly goes to work for rival Chinese manufacturers, to give them "lessons" in his craft. A businessman, Franco (Servillo) arranges for toxic waste to be dumped on mob-owned land, while he offers university graduate Roberto (Paternoster) a chance to work for him. Finally ageing mob soldier Don Ciro (Imparato), who delivers money to the families of prisoners affiliated with his clan, finds himself in a wilderness as his bosses lose control.
Garrone, one of six writers on the project including Saviano himself, has no qualms about dropping audiences straight into this disorientating world - one that is also decidedly everyday. While the likes of Marco and Ciro begin the film, quoting from Scarface - Marco even wearing a replica of Tony Montana's infamous red Hawaiian shirt - there is little else movie-like about these wannabe gangsters. Even the scene where Marco and Ciro uncover a shipment of weapons, spraying bullets gleefully across a river, is almost laughable given that they're dressed in only their underwear.
Attempting to show how criminals live side-by-side with local law-abiding residents, Gomorrah does very little in attempting to mythologise the life of crime. The action takes place primarily in the decaying and decidedly unglamorous Naples suburb of Scampia where these criminals do their business in disused buildings, grim housing blocks and dingy bars.
In some ways Gomorrah recalls Ricky Tognazzi's 1993 film La Scorta (The Escort) a similarly downbeat take on the Sicilian mafia. Indeed, the only glamour on show is a world away, as we briefly glimpse a television news-clip showing Scarlett Johansson on the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival.
Garrone and his fellow writers have a knack of crafting memorable scenarios - such as when Totò and some other lads prove that they're "men" by wearing a (very ragged) piece of body armour and taking a bullet from a gun at close range. There's something very desperate about this, a feeling that pervades the film as a whole. Invariably some strands of the story, which don't overlap greatly, are more compelling than the others - in particular the Marco/Ciro and Pasquale narratives - but there's no doubt that Gomorrah knits together to create an impressive patchwork impression of the modern-day mafia.
If you want to see a gangster film that isn't all about stylized violence, then Gomorrah is for you. More thoughtful than most gangland films, its attempt to show how organized crime has infiltrated every level of society is impressive.
