•
Rating: Moretti, after the less successful detour with "3 piani," returns to his roots, resumes being Moretti.
The film is well-constructed: there's the actual film (which presents the current difficulties, related to relationships, the current state of film production, etc., but without references to today's political situation), the film being shot (set in 1956, highly politically charged), and the dreamed film (with less focus, revolving around his married life). Throughout the plot, many, if not all, of Moretti's known themes and obsessions find space. Here, self-referentiality reaches its peak, but in some cases, it's explored in a manner never seen before (the discourse on the visualization of violence, revisited from "Caro Diario," intended as pure entertainment and contrasted with Kieslowski's vision, could alone be worth the ticket price—a call for reflection that's anything but trivial).
Beyond the direct references to his previous cinema, the film is rich in citation, both implicit (the circus, the director in crisis, etc.) and explicit (names like Cassavetes, Kieslowski, Fellini, Taviani, Scorsese, etc., are mentioned). Surrounded by many of his favorite actors (and ultimately paying tribute to those who have collaborated with him over the years), Moretti, as usual, dominates the scene. However, he does so with a less aggressive and iconoclastic approach compared to his earlier films, revisiting his obsessions (shoes, songs, dancing) but focusing almost exclusively on the past. The impression is that today's reality, aside from certainly not appealing to him, has become too complicated and confused, lacking solid reference points to be narrated with a bit of objectivity, or perhaps the appropriate tools to understand it are truly missing.
So, in the end, Moretti simply prefers to rewrite history and offer us that dream that many of us, in the past and at least for a moment, have longed for. And to which, for just a few more moments before the final credits roll, we might still, perhaps naively, wish to believe.
Loading comments slowly
Other reviews
By Marco84
"Moretti seems to have wanted to get rid of not one, but many pebbles in his shoes."
"The film is a man trying to ask himself what the real meaning of cinema is today."
By Stanlio
I found it very touching to see a Nanni Moretti, now seventy years old, who reveals signs of imminent old age... but still having the desire to depict lives, situations, and places.
I appreciated the subtle critique towards Netflix when it makes two of its officials repeatedly say '...in 190 countries of the world!'
