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Rating: Debaseriano, believe me when I say that I wanted to write the most beautiful and playful piece that has ever appeared on the internet. Unfortunately, since it is impossible for something in nature to be born free from the characteristics of its own factor, forgive me if the story told will be here and there disconnected and rhetorical as unfortunately my wit is, and focus on the exemplarity of this story within the folds of my words.
What does it mean to be subversive?
We are in Massachusetts in 1920, and this is the story of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.
Anarchists and immigrants.
The atmosphere is tense in the spring of that year, and the politics of Attorney Palmer worry the weaker classes, the minorities.
In particular, there are an event and a campaign that concern them.
The first is the death of Andrea Salsedo, who mysteriously fell from a twelfth-floor window of the police command: political section.
The second is the deportations: twenty-five thousand people are dragged from their homes and deported illegally by the police.
Most people lock themselves at home, and the immigrant anarchists seek a safe place to hide propaganda material. For this, five of them go to retrieve the car at an American citizen's home; he calls the police, who manage to capture two of them, the only ones who escaped on foot, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.
From this moment, Nicola and Bartolomeo are in the hands of the state, from which they should be judged impartially.
Instead, in this story, the dignity of the defendants clashes against the prejudice, arrogance, arrogance, and conformism of the police, witnesses, the public prosecutor, and the judge.
In a completely arbitrary way, the two are accused of a robbery and a double murder. They are incriminated by the possible coincidence between Sacco's gun and the bullets that killed the two victims. In reality, there is no evidence against them. They are incriminated only for being Italian and being anarchists, for being subversive and being a minority. Being a minority is being subversive.
...
The film shows us the long trial saga, lasting seven years, while it investigates how it acts differently in the souls of the two accused, victims of this story.
Their past is meticulously scrutinized: they were conscientious objectors during the Great War.
Three years later, Sacco is a skilled worker in a shoe factory. Of a shy character, he initially does not bow his head to the abuses of the prosecution.
Then he retreats into a proud and desperate silence.
Vanzetti is a fish peddler. Vanzetti is volcanic, talkative, and idealistic. When he begins to speak in defense of himself and his ideals, it is like a torrent.
"I have never thrown bombs, I have never shot anyone."
...
"I believe in anarchy."
...
"Anarchy means freedom, abolition of a society divided into classes, respect for others; for me, these are the things that matter in life and on these I have tried to live my life."
Their words and their trajectory hit like stones and stir something.
And extraordinary is the performance of the two actors, Riccardo Cucciolla and Gian Maria Volonté, who give vigor and strength to the characters, without ever yielding to pathos.
Then, after the film, glancing on Google, I notice that Amazon has the film on its platform, and I think back to Sacco's words:
"You talk about dollars and cents, Mr. Prosecutor. And surely, you would talk about millions of dollars if it were about one of these industry and finance bosses, who bring money to the university and everyone says: 'What a great man he is!' But here it is that I have been working and living in this country for thirteen years, free, as they told me it was; I have worked like a dog, but I have not had the satisfaction of saving a dollar..."
...so I wonder where Bezos stands in this story and where the morality is in all this, and I can't answer myself.
But I think of the victims, not subversive, not anarchic, but marginalized, who in the face of a similar death, did not have songs, films, or books to remember their story. Thus, I like to think that this film can also be for them.
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