Nanni Moretti
Bianca (1984)

I've been doing amateur theater for many years. Last year we staged "Agnese's Dream."

Agnese is the daughter of a deity who sends her to analyze the modern world; after an earthquake, she falls into a coma. In her long "sleep," she witnesses many life situations of humans from a third-party perspective. Upon waking up, Agnese realizes that the only "solution" to the world's ills is love.

Bianca was therefore a Déjà Vu but not with a happy ending.

Who are the human beings populating the country of Italy in 1984?

What were the previous ten, fifteen years for?

In a world steeped in Reaganite hedonism, in a stripped-down and sleepy Rome, the characters move like automatons! The human beings depicted are surreal caricatures, activating and deactivating on command like hedonistic robots, all soullessly enacting the script of life, flat and empty.

The film is a mirror of humanity's future, and today it is so modern that 40 years seem not to have passed at all.

Nothing is real in the film, and in the end, it feels more like a dream than reality, and only in this way can it be interpreted. It is like a puzzle, a mosaic that, once completed, will lead to a tragic result.

MICHELE APICELLA (THE EVERYMAN WHO BECOMES A PROPHET)

He's the idealistic student who fought alongside men and women in the seventies, for better education, for equality, for abortion and freedom. He is a man so modern that he already has all the "ills" that will characterize the future up to our times. He is a "control freak," obsessive-compulsive, bipolar, and "narcissistic," gluttonous for sweets and love. Only those who have suffered deeply can read others' suffering, yet Michele rejects the school's psychologist by denying his "pathologies." This is also a futuristic view of the stigma surrounding "mental illnesses" in our country.

BIANCA (THE OBSESSION LOVE)

Bianca is the ideal and idealized woman. She could be salvific for Michele, but when she steps off the farcical bus, she disappears, and this is a metaphor for what will happen. Bianca is in the mechanism like the others but is unaware of it; therefore, the story will not evolve.

In love, Michele brings his idealism and his pathologies; he is retroactively jealous and obsessed with Bianca to the point that leaving her will return him to solitude and his delusions.

THE TERRACE, OBSERVATORY ON THE MISERIES OF THE WORLD

The terrace door "births" Michele, who, with each question to his neighbors, will begin the descent into the abyss. From there, he will see the decline of the "modern" couple, the elderly who want to appear young and bring no wisdom, and the madness of the invisible neighbor who shoots at animals. It is also on the terrace that he will bring Bianca to see the ideal and loving COUPLE, who has replaced the previous ones, but the scene's light will swiftly go out.

THE (FAKE) MARILYN MONROE SCHOOL

Ten years ago, the school was the place of student occupation; now the recreational room belongs to the staff, complete with an arcade and a bar. The "Temple" of knowledge has turned from an institution into a "company," where the Principal does "team building" with the teaching staff, leaving students entirely to their fate.

THE SLEEPING CRIMES AND THE DETECTIVE

Michele Apicella is guilty!

Guilty of crimes? Perhaps only in his mind, in his dream. From investigator, he becomes investigated.. Awareness leads to anger, and anger leads to "killing" even oneself! Taking the blame for all evils becomes the only solution for a defeated man. Even the police station is surreal, his office is within "walking" distance, in a "purgatory" staircase before the protagonist is "imprisoned" and disappears.

Where are we going now, we Italian men and women of 2024? Do we learn from mistakes, or are we as passive as the men and women of forty years ago?