Then 'n'other thing: do we have a Bible?
But are you a believer?
I'm hoping...
Stefano Cucchi is dying and confides in a volunteer whom he feels he can trust. He was arrested a few days earlier for "dealing and possession." The police beat him, and then guards, doctors, heads, and relatives failed to notice he was dying, and he slipped away quietly, without bothering anyone.
The forces of the law obviously were outraged at this film, saying it was mud slung at them paid for with state money. Evidently, they did not truly understand Cremonini's work, which does not want to—nor can it be—a document useful to shed light on a complex and still unresolved case. Doing it today, when everything is still open, is a programmatic choice. It is not necessary to precisely establish the causes of Stefano's death to grasp a greater truth, one dramatically larger than punches and bruises. Namely, that all the wheels of the state and society failed to hold onto an Italian son, did not manage to keep him within the system to save him. The endless networks failed, not preventing that insignificant grain of sand from following its ruinous path.
There is no culprit here; there is a whole world that cannot notice the impending death of a man, too caught up in its Kafkaesque bureaucratic procedures. Stefano slips away gently, without making a noise, while everyone is only concerned with rules and responsibilities, always shifting the burden of choices and actions onto someone else.
Punches, kicks, epileptic attacks, malnutrition, or dehydration—it's not so much how Cucchi died that poses a general problem, but the fact itself. It doesn't matter (from this particular perspective) how those terrifying bruises were caused, but the indisputable fact that those bruises were there, yet few wondered why. Everyone focuses on the guilt, forgetting the primary good: the preservation of life. Everything else comes after.
And in the slow spiral of death and abandonment, Stefano is not free from blame. In part, he himself harms himself; he is not an unblemished lamb. This self-destructive tension can only strengthen the universal and existential reading of the work, attenuating the contingent and political one. Existence itself assumes a strong self-harming connotation. Alessandro Borghi’s Cucchi is too torn by pain to try to save himself; he lets himself die rather than try to rise from the apnea. A frightening and radical drama that looks far beyond the trials and accusations against the police, aiming for a purely nihilistic vision. The domino tiles are clear and dark, but a decisive and collective turn is needed to rise, which is instead weighed down by bureaucratic labyrinths, disinterest, flight from responsibility. Yet, benevolence is useless because it is thin, indecisive, cowardly.
A heartrending, repetitive, obsessive dirge that drags on for a few days of suffering. In Borghi's gaze and his bruises lies all the existential evil of this work, which unfortunately does not maintain consistent quality in all its parts. The writing is not perfect, though it has some devastating peaks, the direction is simple but offers remarkable frames. Without Borghi on screen, the richness of acting suffers noticeably, taking a bit of luster away from this very dark picture.
7.5/10
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