Gianni Amelio
Colpire Al Cuore

THE REVIEW

If the '68 movement is now historicized and there exists an abundant bibliography and filmography about it, regardless of their historical artistic or testimonial value, the '70s continue to be a kind of black hole.

To this day, there are few intelligent and successful films explicitly dedicated to them, especially to our years of lead and the strategy of tension. Yet they were extraordinary years from many points of view, during which Italy, highly politicized and characterized by strong participatory democracy, on the one hand confronted the oil crisis, 25% inflation, industrial restructuring, and the informatization of production (and, therefore, the crisis of the Fordist working class and the beginning of mass precarious work), state terrorism, black and red; on the other, made great social conquests (the Workers' Statute, the Regions, sexual equality and the new family status, divorce, and many others) and cultural ones. They were also years of joy and entertainment, as demonstrated by the great comedians of the time (but also trash cinema, which is experiencing a real reassessment), the metropolitan Indians, social autonomy, and the nascent free radios. However, today the common sense is different, and a gloomy memory prevails, even if inaccurate or blurred. Only inflation, bombs, and shootings are remembered. The power of the mass media's single-minded thinking.

Two great directors dedicated two of their beautiful works to the theme of red terrorism, when it had already entered a crisis, but was not yet completely defeated: Bertolucci, with "Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man," and Amelio, with "Blow to the Heart." Amelio's film is very interesting because it is marked by the malaise of an entire era and the conflict between father and son.

A twilight film, painfully restrained, entirely centered on the figure of the son, an adolescent too young (who knows, perhaps there is a vague echo of Musset’s "Confessions of a Child of the Century") to be a terrorist or an accomplice, like his father, a well-known university professor; but too early to be a typical indifferent consumer of the Craxism of "Milano to drink." He cannot close himself in his private life and only think about that and being fashionable. Like all adolescents, he tries to understand the world around him, which is anything but easy, but he uses an interpretative grid without nuances. Either right or wrong, or good or bad. Thus, the father, his ideas, his acquaintances, his friendships are condemned without appeal. Amelio does not judge, does not take sides either for the father's reasons or for the son's; he maintains a proper distance, as it has been said (in this film more than ever the form is substance): look at the skillful use of the tracking shot. By doing so, he invites us to do it, to take sides: How will we judge the father's choices? And the son's severity? Will we be able to contextualize them?

Amelio gives us not only a refined film but also an "ethical" portrayal of those years, as he will later do with "The Stolen Children," an absolute masterpiece, the best description of the declining Italy of the CAF (Craxi, Andreotti, Forlani), ready for Berlusconism.