•
Rating:
Hello guys/girls, many of you must have started following the football championship in the past few weeks, cheering for your respective favorite team (I am torn between Juventus and Pro Patria) and looking for a small escape and a redemption from your daily anxieties through the sport - watched, imagined if you don't have sky, or practiced - as well as an attempt to sublimate the natural competitive spirit - offspring of the era of the Communes - which pits every respectable average Italian against the other: for which we of Pro Patria do not love the other teams of the hinterland too much, and we Juventus fans do not love, nor are we loved, by other teams and other fans in general (never understood why).
All in all, on reflection, the individual teams we support are "identifying signs" and, in turn, small artificial homelands, functional in constructing a fake identity: for which the citizen, in supporting one or the other team, makes a partisan choice that consolidates his identity compared to another, a bit like in the times of the Guelphs and Ghibellines; the migrant from the south, when reaching Turin, Milan, Rome, Florence and others, becomes part of a social body already foreign, with all its "signa" of recognition, and its banners, only when supporting the team of the new city, in the belief of being part of a welcoming community, almost becoming it; and even the peripheral, born far from the main stadiums, in the vast provinces of our beautiful country, ultimately dreams of a metropolitan or Other dimension compared to the places of origin, giving all of themselves to their adopted team: and, in fact, in the remote villages of the Marche hinterland they don’t support Frasassi, but Juventus; in the distant Po Valley plains, they don't support Poggio Rusco, but Inter; in the sunny Calabrian heat, they don’t support Rossano Calabro, but Milan; and so on, dreaming of a glory that the everyday doesn’t offer. The best would be to cheer for one or the other, as I do, being provincial and cosmopolitan together, but this is not always possible, as for many, football Faith is unique, indivisible.
A beautiful essay on the social and cultural importance of football just outlined, or rather, of football fandom and its repercussions in our country, is given by the masterpiece of the Vanzina brothers and, at the same time, the acting zenith of Diego Abatantuono and his longtime friends (Ugo Conti, Massimo Boldi, Teo Teocoli, the great Dogui): this "Eccezzziunale Veramente" ('82); a film which, I assume, is known to everyone and does not require excessive and pedantic presentations.
It is a feature film in episodes that tells the adventures of three characters, all played by Diego himself, dealing with their own football obsessions: in the first episode, Donato, a Milan supporter migrant, wounds an Inter ultra leader, eventually stealing his girlfriend (an excellent Stefania Sandrelli); in the second episode, Tirzan, a Pugliese truck driver and die-hard Juventus fan, tries to follow his team on a European away game, but things go awry when he trades his truck with a Slav’s (recte: schlafo); in the third, and to my humble opinion, most successful episode, Franco, an Inter fan obsessed with the football pools, is tricked by his longtime friends into believing he hit the jackpot, with understandable effects on his daily balance, leading him to leave his family and incur debts until discovering the tragicomic reality and trying to remedy in underworld-like atmospheres.
Those who love this film to madness will remember step by step the best lines and jokes of Abatantuono & Co. (I highlight: the reading of the Gospel in the first episode; the dialogue between Tirzan and the gay hippie predicting Juve's relegation in the second; the entire third episode, with specific reference to "faccia di culo strikes again" and "mom’s filet") making the analysis of the delirious comedy that pervades "Eccezzziunale..." unnecessary, which has the merit, by the way, of having created an authentic slang, launching it throughout Italy after the triumphant World Cup in '82.
No less beautiful is the description of a peripheral Milan, sometimes seen in the early morning lights, of bars with the betting card, of endless courses with elderly women on bicycles (no longer seen), or the description of the southern interiors of railing buildings, with spectacular small bedrooms where no less than five or six siblings sleep, contrasted with certain solitary bourgeois apartments where the devouring passion for gambling has the explosive effect of breaking every convention and every relationship, hollowing it from the inside and exposing its hypocrisy.
Connecting to previous observations, I draw your attention to the "oblique cut" with which the film tackles the football phenomenon: except for sparse remarks, it neither shows nor talks exactly about football, but about all the emotions and situations, or problems, that are created because of football, seen almost as a social pathology (though treated benignly) and thus a symptom of the loneliness and certain maladjustment of individuals: from the migrant, who seeks social inclusion by becoming a Milan leader, to the trucker, who in his wandering makes Juventus a guiding star, to the inveterate player, who sees in the magic bet a redemption from his daily frustrations, even at the cost of betting against his own team, renouncing a Faith that is not evidently an absolute but a surrogate and compensation for something unfillable, like shopping at department stores which I have dealt with - with You and for You - in recent weeks.
Laughing and joking, the Vanzina Bros therefore confirm themselves, in my humble opinion, as absolute champions in our best "minor" cinema and refined interpreters of a reality that, behind the raucous laughter and crude jokes, drunken tavern benders, possesses a bitter aftertaste and offers a sense of estrangement that saddens and charms together.
Faithfully Yours
Il_Paolo
Loading comments slowly
