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Rating:
"Lo zio di Brooklyn". Revolutionary. Dark. Metaphysical. Farcical.
Debut work by the Sicilians Ciprì and Maresco, authors of "Cinico Tv", a provocative and illogical outpouring of visionary vulgarities with mask-men as protagonists (Paviglianiti the flatulist, for example), projected for years on Raitre.
In 1995, with an irrelevant content pretext, the television concept turns into a feature film. Difficult, curious, aesthetic, and courageous. The two authors, Sicilian directors, and screenwriters project us into a peripheral, abandoned, dim, and desolate Palermo, filled with melancholy and annoying clichés, portrayed by absurd and lifeless characters, invaded by funerals (is life like death?) and packs of stray dogs (is man the king of strays?).
In an undeterminable time setting, one perceives the sense of abandonment from the ruins, the death of culture from the continual funerals, the collage of provocative clichés linked to Sicily (mafia members always active and very slow rhythms), and with them improbable and animalistic characters, in some cases extracted from the old television broadcasts of the duo.
Provocative and fierce, 98 minutes of decadent and irreverent poetry. Paradoxical and incomprehensible logical leaps appear like scenes put together to leave a message that does not immediately resonate, almost as if the two authors had a lot to say and insisted on fiercely pursuing their sense of accusation and provocation towards Italian cinema, the system, and predictable comedy. Sharp, in the grotesque characters, in the extreme and uncivilized settings, in the comic defeatism without perspective, in the abandonment of the place and the person. An emotional collapse, sharp in its iconography and its subverted realism, made of paradox and petty men in underwear who suddenly talk to the audience, provoking reactions from the puzzled and horrified spectator.
A very poor narrative structure (which reflects the intellectual poverty of the characters), flimsy and sketched out that launches a pretext and does not follow it because it wants to focus energetically on an aesthetic issue. It seems like a mafia story, in a Bigazzi-like black and white scenography, that wants to sadden us and instead, with its monochrome, highlights the decay, the dull and monotonous theme made of sketched-out pseudo-cabaret and amateurish acting. Incomprehensible dialogues, jokes in tight Sicilian dialect, burps, farts, and despair complete the frame of desolation and abandonment. The donkey sketch is low and unclear, the old cyclist searching for his stolen bike (a metaphor for the search for something never found) without success, and the sounds, so greasy, filthy, and dusty are part of an accusatory and surreal atmosphere that underlines the animalistic trait of humanity, with malice and contempt, shameless insistence, and dilated times.
Absurd. Forced. Courageous. Made to astonish. But absolutely brilliant. Neglected by every film festival.
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