Matteo Garrone
Gomorra

Italy is no more.

It's the only thought that kept hammering in my head scene after scene, throughout the entire screening of the film. It can't be "really" like this, because if even 10% of what you see corresponds to reality, then the very concept of a country has gone to hell. Here, nothing can be salvaged anymore because there's nothing left to recover.

You can't recover the land, the one with peaches to be thrown away on the street because they're toxic. You can't regain the youth of kids happy to drive trucks loaded with garbage. You can't reclaim the humiliation of a lace master who ended up as a truck driver, nor the neglect, the rape of monstrous creatures like Scampia, "a neighborhood suitable for the poor," as Rezza might call it.

You walk out of the theater drenched in a sense of disgust, of filth, feeling offended and dirty. And you say: damn, but what does all this have to do with me?

Me.

I do have something to do with it, as someone from Bologna would say, only this time, by chance, he claims it doesn't concern him because the left was in charge there.

Acknowledging, contextualizing, and circumscribing is the only thing one can manage: see, this mess happened in 2003, you were governing, while nothing happened under us, people were calm and not protesting in the streets, and even the Camorra was retreating. 

Oh no, my dear, because the archaeological analysis of the remains dates back the dumping ground to at least 1999, and back then, it was you in the regional council.

Yes, but at the municipality, which has to handle waste sorting, it was you.

And so on.

And today? Today.

Today there's a president who first tells the Campanians that everyone must do their part, that the garbage has to be put somewhere, then by chance reads the documents of the parliamentary inquiry commission and gets outraged with those in the north, all included, no exception: you sent the waste here, now you take it back. And sure, the people from Padania say, of course, we were just about to tell you.

I no longer understand who's saying what for what obscure reason.

But meanwhile, here we are, with those who shoot, burn, and devastate, with those who want to speak and end up killed for being left without protection, and others who, after acknowledging and contextualizing, say: but the Neapolitans are guilty too, they should have rebelled.

Rebel? How? When they do, if it's not the thug with a bomb, the riot policeman makes sure they lose their will. You, sitting in Milan or Turin or Verona complaining about the intrusive Moroccan, have you ever dealt with a Camorrist? Ask yourself.

I feel a chill when asked where I'm from. I tremble when saying I am from Milan. I am Lombard. I'm a bit ashamed and feel guilty for having closed my eyes, pretending everything was under control, someone would somehow solve it. But "someone who," I really never asked myself that when I went to vote. I delegated everything, as was my right, but I also delegated my sense of critique. Too much.

And today it burns me, because Saviano has left me naked with my choices of yesterday and my shame of today.

N Naples says that it is no longer Italy there, and perhaps it never was; it has passed from the Bourbons directly into the hands of Cutolo and the Casalesi, but with such a painless, slow, calm transition that no one noticed anything. A general, silent expropriation. And authorized, almost hoped for by some for vile propaganda.

But Naples also says something else, much worse: that Italy has been gone for a while. It is not in Bolzano nor in Venice. It is not in Florence, Rome, Palermo, Bresso, Scandicci, Locorotondo, and Venaria. Some arbitrary Padania will not be able to form citizens with civic consciences when the concepts of city, community, POLIS, have been replaced by trenches behind which to hide. We are eco-bales in landfills, unsorted waste awaiting incineration.

Gomorrah spits in my face that I am Italian precisely today when it is no longer possible to really be. I am ashamed of having been (and still remaining as I write, attempting a belated recovery) a circumstantial Italian, provisional, one of those who only remember it when there are 11 semi-literates in their underwear chasing a ball and we have to sing a national anthem that was also provisional until 2005. Just like in these days of the European Championships.

Gomorrah? Yes, watch it. Watch it every night the National Team is on TV.