Gabriele Mainetti
Freaks Out

For April 25th, I decided to take a look at Freaks out, a film set in occupied Rome that I've been meaning to watch for a while.

The capital during the last years of Fascism is, despite everything, a very culturally and artistically vibrant place: avant-garde theater, film clubs, and the first buds of neorealism, variety theaters, and circuses are all there.

Then came ’38 and the racial laws, then ’40 and the outbreak of the war, and then ’43 and the fall of Fascism, September's armistice, and the capital occupied by the Nazis. Then, finally, the German roundups and daily American bombings begin…

… in March ’44 the city is still in turmoil, and the occupiers are not very organized. Thousands of people are hidden (Jews, draft dodgers, disbanded soldiers), almost everyone is hungry, and many people line up for a ration of food. The partisans strike when they can, while the prisons are overcrowded with men arrested and ready to be sent to Germany to work.

In this Rome, this Rome "open city" in name only and filled with German commands, the grand show of the Zirkusberlin circus is performed every night; while the Roman circus Mezzapiotta does the same on tour in other cities and towns.

This circus offers a fantastic world, inhabited by bizarre and mythical characters, extraordinary creatures capable of memorable and astonishing feats, where imagination becomes reality. It is led by the Jew Israel who presents Cencio, the insect charmer, Mario, a funny dwarf, Fulvio, a man entirely covered in hair and strong enough to bend iron, and Matilde, a girl who generates a strong electric current.

Thus, as in Pan's Labyrinth, I love the fantastical when it meets history. And great history bursts into the circus and the film along with the allied bombs that fall on the tent, disrupting a reality already in disarray.

The cup is full, and the vase has overflowed: on a battered wagon, the five return to Rome, and Israel understands they can no longer stay there. Despite initial doubts, he convinces everyone to leave for America, but once they gather the money for the fake documents, he mysteriously disappears. To go find him, the four must leave their refuge and venture into the streets of the capital…

…meanwhile, on the other side, Franz, Israel's antagonist and a freak like Cencio, Fulvio, Mario, and Matilde, lives his torments. Franz is the ringleader of Zirkusberlin and can foresee the future. He plays new music that he dreams of, sending the audience into ecstasy. And he draws, draws his dreams: the fall of Nazism and strange appliances, cell phones, and the advent of four superhuman beings, saviors of the Reich. With them, he desires to return to Berlin, since, due to an extra finger on each hand, he was discharged from the army and sent to Rome to lead, much to his dismay, what the Reich deemed most fitting for him: the circus.

He is the antagonist, often as it happens, the most interesting character, the one who, in following his grand ideals, loses touch with reality, with his capacity to be human…

Indeed, the four represent for Franz the great opportunity to accomplish from afar the greatest feat: to save the Reich from certain defeat. So, he seeks them, and they seek Israel, finding each other, separating, and finding each other again. These supermen or monsters intersect amidst the guerrilla warfare igniting between occupiers and the occupied, with partisans on one side and Nazis on the other.

It all holds together well, and two hours and twenty minutes pass quickly.

The description and portrayal of our heroes is lovely, also focused on their deformed physicality and physiological needs. In a certain way, it is Boccaccian. Shame, enjoyment, and revenge derive from them. And so, there is Fulvio demonstrating his beastly vigor (sexual and otherwise); Cencio, with a Cyrano-like nose, who is a frequent visitor of Roman prostitutes; lastly, Mario, who is a compulsive onanist, furthermore, very endowed with the less apparent virtue that creates a joyful astonishment in the female representatives who approach him intimately.

Perhaps here there is a little less poetry, and perhaps, yes, one cannot proclaim a masterpiece, as with the aforementioned Pan's Labyrinth. And perhaps, perhaps it is less evocative than Garrone's beautiful Tale of Tales. However, when someone in Italian cinema steps out of their small patch and creates a good film with Italian flair, I rejoice and celebrate.

It was April 25th, for heaven's sake, not November 4th or May 24th!

Recommended: For those who can look beyond errors in detail and appreciate the goodness of the picture.

Not recommended: For those who… eh, but April 25th is divisive and for those who… eh, but the resistance...