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Rating: Anger and melancholy, violence and despair in the eyes of an elementary school child. A child who dreams of becoming a camorrista, who believes there is no alternative. Watching it again today, this film opens the doors of memory, rekindling almost buried emotions from when I watched (and rewatched) it - as a child myself - and those scenes of decay and indifference, that dilapidated life and the sharp tongue of the children from Corzano struck me deeply every time, leaving me with a sense of disgust, a pity that I was beginning to understand, almost an exotic fascination for those places where rules didn’t exist, where oppression and insult were the norms.
There would really be so much to say about this kind of cinema. The risk of stereotype is just around the corner, some rhetorical hints certainly aren’t missing, but they are soon forgotten in front of a humanity that allows itself to be seen in this way, transparently, without pretenses. The young actors speaking in dialect are a blow to the heart, especially today as cinema increasingly distances itself from real life, from the stories of daily miseries in many parts of Italy. It even makes you question the very paranza of Saviano's children, because here there is nothing epic, nothing alluring, just realism that is sometimes tragic and sometimes comedic of children who have not yet ruined their lives but are irreversibly set on the path of pain. However, they are providentially free of heroic masks, they are just children, whose transparency of soul allows for extremely clear and pure views on the many surrounding meannesses.
Family amputations, criminal tendencies, adult immaturity or their disastrous living conditions are reflected without pity or emphasis in the school themes presented to the protagonist (Paolo Villaggio). What emerges is a great dignity, an inexplicable composure amidst degenerations, a care for human matters that contradicts certain scars inflicted on the social fabric. Behind every firefight, there is a sorrowful mother who prays, who hopes for a teacher's help to bring her son back to civilization. There is a little sister who must become a woman prematurely, there is a brother withering in resentment.
In the end, what remains is a small vocabulary on the meaning of being a teacher. Which is not necessarily about being in a popular neighborhood martyring oneself for the school, but more simply about going to meet the students one by one, wherever they are, metaphorically. Understanding the naps of the child who gets up at dawn to help his father collect cartons, joking about a babà with the chubby schoolmate, laughing when they call you a "ricchione," even giving a slap to a young delinquent when there’s no other way. Becoming a brute if necessary. Even attempting to steal. Obviously, a world that will seem very distant to many, but which is not so far, even without going to the province of Naples.
A development of the theme "how to be a teacher" that should be paradigmatic, because every class has its Raffaele and its Totò. And perhaps I too, when I enter the classroom, when I read the essays of my students, in some way let the ancient memory of this film resonate in me, of that chubby professor who, having laid down the useless arms of inflexible discipline, discovers himself capable of listening and forgiving. He discovers that it is necessary to leave a piece of his heart with his students, and it is not certain that it will be of any use. That teacher sees Raffaele from the train, moving away on a moped on the horizon, and does not know what will become of him. Whether the seed will bear fruit or die shortly after.
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