Nanni Moretti
Habemus Papam

Consulting my personal notebook, where I keep notes of movies watched, books read, albums listened to, and various other reflections, under the entry "Nanni Moretti-filmography et similia," I find the following observations noted, dated some years back and never reviewed: "Film: 'Io sono un autarchico': autarchic; 'Ecce Bombo': post-'77; 'Sogni d'oro': not found; 'Bianca': indigestible (Sacher+Nutellona); 'La messa è finita': Oedipus/Electra complex; 'Palombella rossa': self-referential; 'La cosa': who knows; 'Caro diario': Keith Jarrett; 'Aprile': self-referential cubed; 'La stanza del figlio': to avoid with family (similar mourning); 'Il caimano', apocalyptic and integrated."

For the sake of completeness, I also quote the "summary judgment" also contained in my notebook: "interesting director but: a) style always uncertain, dramatic in premise, comedic in character and character definition, grotesque in effects partly because of a not always happy ability to choose the right actors (e.g., the father in 'La messa è finita', friends in ep. 2 of 'Caro diario', 'Bianca', 'Palombella'); b) excessively in love with himself, tends to spoil good dramatic ideas by always placing himself at the center of the stage (ego-centric), which he cannot, however, govern, to the point of transforming the dramatic into comedic and grotesque, perhaps beyond the intentions; c) not surprisingly the best films or moments in his films are when he is silent, or does not place himself at the center as the actor of a drama: e.g., 'Caro diario', ep. 1, all of 'La stanza del figlio', and also 'Il caimano,' where he plays Berlusconi with an authentic stroke of genius that re-evaluates a career (note affinity with Botero in 'Il portaborse' in the driving scene); d) excessively hieratic, similar to young Battiato when he says important phrases already knowing they are phrases that, because of their dramaturgical placement, become mottos or clichés, which it is impossible to disagree with: from 'I do things, see people', 'am I more noticeable if I stay home', 'words are important', 'we keep hurting ourselves', 'it must be sad to die without children', 'Jennifer Beals!!', 'I will always be on the side of the minority'. Therefore, he exacerbates the phatic function of language (if you don't know what that is, look it up on Wiki), meaning he communicates nothing, because communicating with the world is the last of his thoughts."

While I'm here - don't worry, soon I'll get to the actual review, but if you're smart you'll understand that the preamble isn't lengthy without reason - I'll also post the "final conclusions" contained in the same notebook: "director that appeals to those who: were born around the mid/late '50s (like my aunt, class of '55, but also my younger aunt, class of '59!); to the children of those born in the late '50s (like my cousins, classes of '77 and '92, daughters of the aforementioned '55 aunt, and my cousin in-between); are tendentially left-wing, of the 'maximalist' type (well, like my aunts!); that is, they held Massimo d'Alema in esteem in the '90s (well, again, like my aunts! My older cousin used to favor Bertinotti, the younger one favors Vendola, who are like the D'Alema of the '90s, yesterday and today); are crazy about Serena Dandini (well, again, my aunts were already following 'La tivvù delle ragazze', my older cousin 'Avanzi', the younger one 'Parla con me'); deal with things like fair trade (when my cousin got married she gave me a candle from the shop downstairs, donating the price of the favor to charity: the worst part is she emphasized it and told everyone; noblesse), or with shoes like Clarks, reads South American literature or, lately, mainstream chic mostly published by Einaudi".

According to you, who did I go with to see 'Habemus Papam'? With my aunt, my younger cousin, and with the now familiar Simona, who in turn partially matches the "average Moretti fan" profile I've taken care to outline in the lines you've just read (like me, she doesn't like Clarks; but we disagree on the alternative: she All Star, I Vans. Besides everything else).

So then. I'll spare you yet another summary of the film's plot, which you can read just about anywhere (in short: a priest in an identity crisis, like in 'La messa,' or on the secular side, 'Palombella'... only this priest is the newly appointed Pope; and there are troubles), and move directly to the analysis of the film's content, on which I think I have some intelligent and original things to say, justifying the sacrifice you've made in reading all the way through my apparent digressions up to here.

I say apparent, first of all, because Moretti and his loyal audience kind of resemble each other, and end up overlapping, even in small obsessions, to the point of being pleased by films like this: films well-made and well-shot (nothing to say, and who am I to criticize Nanni Moretti? Mario Monicelli?), but films that seem to me, on one side, less original than it might seem at first glance; on the other side, less successful than the latest films from the Roman director, that is, those made in the last decade, in which he had carved out more the role of "Deus ex machina by camera" than "Deus plain and simple," as emerged in his earlier, presumptuous, works from the late '70s-'80s.

Why less original?

Here I take it a bit broadly and remind you of a movie you've probably never seen, such as 'L'udienza' ('71) by the master of true Italian grotesque, Marco Ferreri; a director I disagree with in every film and every line of screenplay, but who in that distant work (starring an incredible Enzo Jannacci, surrounded by Claudia Cardinale, as well as the usual Ferrerian touring company, from Tognazzi to [well!!!] Michel Piccoli in the role of a young priest) knew how to represent at its peak the incommunicability of the religious message and the distance of the Church-hierarchy from reality, including God as an Entity also in reality, to the point of showing its absurd, Kafkaesque nature (and Kafka is cited twice by Jannacci to define his situation, of a man in eternal waiting for an audience with the Pope).

Here: Moretti reverses (intentionally?) Ferreri, and in his personal way of understanding the grotesque, he seems almost to film 'L'udienza pt. 2', elevating the priest of forty years ago to today's Pope (fair enough), and making the audience the normalcy of things, to the point that the Pope asks for an audience (!) with the psychoanalyst, here played by Moretti in antithesis to the Jannacci of old.

The absurd is not revealed by the absence of explanations and the inaccessible strength of the institution and the men who are part of it - as in Ferreri, more classic - but by the abundant anxiety for clarification that pervades the entire Curia to the point of calling in the psychoanalyst Moretti, from the explicit weakness of the Cardinals, seen in their humanity and their childishness (psychotropic drugs; broom; volleyball; bookmaker odds, doughnuts, museum trips: you will have noticed how Moretti chose some Italian comedy characters, like Camillo Milli and Renato Scarpa, already seen in the role of Barambani in 'Fantozzi contro tutti' and the friend of Enzo in 'Un sacco bello', when they go to Poland), from the panic-laden silence of the simple-minded (but great here as always) Michel Piccoli.

By changing the order of factors, however, the final product doesn't seem different from that of a Ferreri, given that of this film we can say - even by trying hard - no more than what appears: the story of the inadequacy of a subject not ready to take on the responsibilities he is vested with, who, for "cowardice" or less, performs a sort of grand refusal à la Celestino V, which seems to configure no more than a different way of defining the inhuman/superhuman/overwhelming aspects of Power, Institutions, Organized Society, and the dissolution of the individual in front of all this.

That power isn't necessarily the Church is a direct corollary of the premises, meaning the film could be interpreted, politically, as the ineptitude of leadership in a world where leaderism seems to be thaumaturgic: but even in this case, admitted the correctness of the reflection, it seems difficult to go beyond it, as happened, after all, in the unresolved finales of 'La messa' or 'Palombella.'

Well, aside from the obvious anomaly and incredibility of the story (not that the Pope can refuse election, but this usually happens before or in the Conclave, certainly not after the election), I wonder - in an American way: - "what next"? - meaning what does the umpteenth revisitation of these themes lead to? The explanations abound online, in newspapers, Moretti himself in an interview with the legendary Luisella Costamagna and the talented Luca Telese remained vague; to me, with all possible modesty and without disrespecting anyone, it seems that in this film the ideas, though good in the premise, came up short, so I can only summarize it with the famous Rossini quote: "there is good and there is new: but all that is good is not new, and all that is new is not good".

Finally, I tie into the reasons why the film seems less successful than Moretti's latest (the already mentioned 'La stanza' and 'Il caimano'): the good is not new. The good is the disorienting effect of seeing yet another reincarnation of Michele Apicella dealing with the cardinals, and the rigid mechanisms of the Curia, which are torn apart by the intervention of a subject who has nothing to do with the context. Very good, and yet it's the leitmotif of much of Moretti's cinema, but also of Tati, and if we want to go back to noble models even of Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, and Buster Keaton.

The new is not good: the attempt at mature cinema, bold in a great way and representing none other than the Vatican, seems half successful to me; ok for the photography (Moretti reveals himself capable, compared to the past, of even managing chorale scenes, and not only the belly-buttons dialogues/monologues that were his trademark), but definitely a no-go for the final effect, which leaves the sense of a film unravelled halfway.

I'll give you an example of how I would have directed it: same story, but shot only indoors, eliminating the psychoanalyst and perhaps having Moretti play a young cardinal, or have him cover the role of Jerzy Sthur (from Kieslowski's films, but Nanni is no Kieslowski), in which Melvìlle (French, the accents are important) refuses, but just elected, without stirring up too much fuss. Hence a reflection on responsibility or lack thereof, charisma, etc., which could have indeed ended as the film does, starting anew with a conclave from which no one is elected, and so on indefinitely... [a power that cannot, that is in contradiction with itself].

Oh well. Sorry for the length, but this review is also a rant. After the film, we went for a milkshake, but do you think I could voice my opinion? All 'great Nanni', 'celibacy of priests', 'female pope', 'Joan of Arc', 'moral tale', 'foreign pope for the PD', 'Ratzinger', 'saint now', 'Vatican', 'slaves', 'living will'. The philosophy of the boudoir.

As for me, I watched the tips of my shoes.