Nanni Moretti
La Stanza Del Figlio

'The Son's Room' is a dramatic film from 2001 that has swept up a multitude of awards (to name a few: the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and 3 David di Donatello awards).

Death, as seen by Nanni Moretti, is a cause of familial, social, and psychological disintegration. The loss of the son completely changes the protagonists' relationships with themselves, shattering the previously serene stability and turning it into a worn-out heap of perplexity, aggression, despair, and lack of prospects. Touching is the scene where the father, newly struck by the tragedy, grabs an old glued cup and argues in front of the family, dumbfounded by grief, that everything at home is broken. He smashes the cup, which is nothing but a metaphor for the family that has fallen into pieces that can't be glued back together. The inability to manage oneself emerges, so brutally affected by the heart-wrenching reality, perhaps one of the most devastating, of losing one's child.

Moretti plays a psychoanalyst who, after the episode, is so destroyed that he is no longer able to carry on with his profession. Despair leads him to hate a patient from whom he had urgently rushed, skipping a walk with his son. A walk that would probably have changed things, and this thought will gnaw at him even more. The director crafts a very normal family picture, made of daily life and commitments, only to remove a key piece that disintegrates everything that existed before. The loss of the son represents the collapse of any balance. A letter will work the "magic." When everything seems irretrievable, the family comes together again in an attempt to make one last gesture, even indirectly, for the deceased son. A young girl, who had written to the boy and was unaware of the terrible incident, ends up at the center of the family's attention, and, even though a stranger, she represents the connection to the young man's lost reality. In vain attempts, the father tries to obtain some current music that "young people like," to continue sharing with that adolescent sphere that has now vanished.

The film's key lies here. There is no politics nor typical Morettian sarcasm. There are no components of a director who until now has been involved in quite different themes. The film is delicate, lacerating, and unadorned. In a word: successful.