Marco Bellocchio
Rapito

“Kidnapped” by 83-year-old Marco Bellocchio is the confirmation of a talent not yet completely dormant. Or rather, Italian cinema with something to say.

The true story, set between 1858 and 1878, of little Edgardo Mortara, born Jewish and taken from his family on the orders of Pius IX, the Pope King, and raised in the Vatican until adulthood (he was not the only one; forced conversion to Catholicism was a governmental-papal practice of the time), represents the attempt, in truth not entirely fruitless, to tell, as in Bellocchio's recent style, a central story in Italian history and at the same time delve into the folds of misconduct or, in the specific case, into the arrogance of an established power, at the expense of the common man. It is Bellocchio of recent years, less combative and definitely less original than the caustic one of the pre-1968 debut with “Fists in the Pocket” or the angry and anarchic one of the following decade with “Slap the Monster on Page One,” but more pondered, perhaps even more rigorous in detail and staging; it is, in short, the Bellocchio of “The Traitor” that tells Buscetta and the mafia or the extensive and impeccable “Exterior Night” dealing with the Moro case, the Christian Democrats, red terrorism, the Vatican.

There, the Vatican. As a convinced atheist (like Buñuel before him) Bellocchio has the courage to show his anticlericalism in (almost) every film, almost as if wanting to point the Catholic institution par excellence as the focal point of any Italian misdeed. Not Catholic doctrine as such, but the individuals who exercise it or have exercised it; not God but man. And in Bellocchio's religious pantheon, no one is spared: cardinals, bishops, simple priests, even the Pope.

Pius IX, Pope Mastai Ferretti, the one who occupied the throne of Peter the longest (31 years, 7 months, 23 days) is seen here as a fierce Pope, even at times mad, proud and haughty in his pursuit of the ideal of the Papal State and desperate, yet impotent despite the power accumulated until that moment, during the breach of Porta Pia and the birth of the Italian State, of which he professed himself a “prisoner”. He is a severe Pope, at the head of a severe Church. The Vatican is seen as a sort of reeducation boarding school for Jews not converted to Catholicism, where the children of these were torn from the family's affection and persecuted physically and psychologically in the name of a distorted and oppressive religious faith. Bellocchio stops at nothing and even shows the epileptic attack that Pius IX suffered during a rather lively council. The excellent Paolo Pierobon lends his face to him.

The figure of Edgardo is more complex, and at the same time purer. He is that of a child incapable of grasping the essence of things, torn between the desire to return home to the family and the feeling of owing something to those who kidnapped him. Almost as if the Pope were his own father. Thus, the reconstruction of the Mortara family nucleus is perfect, with its Jewish rites and the stubbornness, especially paternal, of wanting to take those who took Edgardo from home to court (above all, the Vicar Pier Gaetano Feletti, who materially, on papal order, took responsibility, through some henchmen, for kidnapping the child, played by a sober Fabrizio Gifuni). Suspended between Bologna and Rome, “Kidnapped” does not even disdain quite a heated critique of the press of the time, blamed for not initially understanding the papal ambitions (at least the Italian one), unlike the foreign press (especially American) which dared to mock the Pope, describing him as a child thief obsessed with Jews and the fear that they might, penetrating the Vatican, circumcise him.

Curious, instead, is the description of the Roman Jewish community, verbally antipapal, in fact obsequious to the temporal power of the Pope and even treacherous (see the figure of Sabatino Scazzocchio, played by Paolo Calabresi), who first assures Edgardo's father of a prompt resolution of the case and then literally kneels at the Pope's feet. It is the director's philosophy, an anticlerical who spares no one, whether they are Catholics or Jews.

Sure, then sometimes Bellocchio gets a little carried away and exaggerates some narrative solutions (the newspapers where figures move like cartoons; the three crosses the Pope orders Edgardo to make with his tongue on the floor; the dream of the little Mortara in which Jesus descends from the cross and leaves as if he did not even agree with the papal decisions) and in general, the few special effects used appear way too “fake”. Furthermore, the procedural excursus, shot like a thriller, seems like a primordial version of that in “The Traitor”.

Excellent, however, is the cinematography by Francesco Di Giacomo: rich, tending towards brown. Rome just outside the Vatican shines with its own light, like the works of the 19th century “Etruscan School”.

Thrilling music.