Marco Bellocchio
Esterno notte

At the end of a rough and gloomy year like 2022, having to point out an Italian film that I deem worthwhile, I do not hesitate to qualify Marco Bellocchio's "Esterno notte" as such. It's not just because this director has always created films that are never trivial and centered on significant themes, but also because of his choice to return to the Moro case, a theme he already tackled at the time of "Buongiorno, notte" back in 2003. But this time Bellocchio proposes a film with sweeping durations (almost 6 hours) which, after its passage in cinema theaters, was programmed by RAI last autumn.

Someone might object to the choice of revisiting the Moro case, about which much has been said and written from 1978 to today. What could be undiscovered? Yet (and this is my impression) the entire affair remains tangled and enigmatic, and one cannot but agree on an obvious fact: of all the innocent victims in that Italian season of the strategy of tension (from 1969 to grazing the '80s of the last century), Aldo Moro was not only the most prominent and theoretically untouchable but above all the one who could have been spared if only those responsible had actually worked to free him from his BR captors. And reviewing the salient phases of the entire affair of Aldo Moro's kidnapping and assassination and that of his escort always leaves one bewildered.

The film, directed with a steady hand and sustained by a fast-paced rhythm, retraces those tragic months giving voice to the protagonists of those times (masterfully portrayed by various actors and actresses of great depth) who appear to us for what they all are, one way or another: losers. It's not just about Aldo Moro (Fabrizio Gifuni perfectly in the role), a man with sober manners (light years away from current politicians) who suffers a tragic fate like a modern Jesus Christ (even to the point of carrying a cross on the Via Crucis), betrayed by his friends (then despised by him) of his party, ultimately appearing cowardly in the face of maneuvers by well-known subversives (P2 and Gelli). Moro is the figure of a man caught in a dramatic whirlwind bigger than himself, to the point of confessing his fear of dying and his desire to keep living.

To Moro, one must add his wife who attempts, as much as she can, to crack the so-called firmness front opposed to negotiating with the BR to free the Christian Democrat statesman. But she does not succeed, and neither do the attempts of then Pope Paul VI yield a better result. Nor do the terrorists responsible for the kidnapping (Moretti, Faranda, and company) come out well, as they do not go beyond the dogmas of Leninist insurrectionalism and do not realize that freeing Moro would have indeed been a destabilizing act for the then Christian Democrat establishment, while killing him would also play the game of other adversaries of the DC politician.

And if there are indeed doubts about the entire affair, it is very elucidating and effective the part in which then Interior Minister Cossiga, not knowing well how to help his friend Moro, resorts to the advice (not at all disinterested) of a psychologist from the USA on behalf of the American government named Pieczenik. He, perhaps the most ambiguous figure of the entire tragedy, advised analyzing the psychological aspects of the moves and communiqués of the brigadists to engage in a sort of completely useless war of nerves with the BR. And if all this was not a diversionary strategy, as was demonstrated by the communiqué indicating Moro's corpse in a frozen lake in Lazio, well, tell me what else it could have been.

In short, as emerges from Bellocchio's beautiful film, freeing Moro was not an insurmountable task since his prison was in an apartment in Rome (a big city for sure, but not comparable to other metropolises), and by using some infiltrator informant in the then far-left, something concrete could have been accomplished without wasting time wondering whether the letters written by Moro during his captivity were authentic or not and whether it was appropriate to negotiate with the BR or not. Perhaps precious time was deliberately wasted, and in hindsight, years after the events, Moro's widow stated, more or less, that she had the sensation that the solution to the entire enigma was almost under the nose, but they continued to avoid positively closing the case and saving the distinguished hostage. A sensation that I fully share.