Notes from Rome

I am in Rome about to fly home from the Leonardo Di Vinci airport. In the headlines, nineteen dead Italian soldiers are coming home from Iraq as war casualties. I am reminded of a scene in Oliver Stone’s “Platoon” when the innocent green troops arrive in DaNang while corpse filled black body bags are being loaded on the C130s for their trip home.  This was part of an illusionary chain of images that I was exposed to during my trip. The Italian audience was enthusiastically receiving Van Sant’s “Elephant”, “Buongiorno Notte” made its opening debut in theaters, Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon A Time in the West” was released on DVD and the anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination was here. There were anti-war demonstrations in the streets, but essentially the country was in shock. They had one day of what we’ve been having for years.  We accept the death toll and the lie thats it's a war on terror. It was interesting to think about a national response to real violence and violence in art.

Something became clear when talking to Italians about the differences between contemporary Italian and American cinema and their relationship to the images of violence, the culture of violence, and the theater of violence.  For Van Sant’s “Elephant” there was as split view message conveyed through the violent acts of American high school teenagers. For the Italians, the intensified imagery was a view into reality. But was “Elephant” a window into the heart of the America society? Van Sant creates an eerie sense of foreboding, the anticipation of violence through detachment. This violence is neither institutional nor social. When we look at American movies with violence, there is always a conflict between hero and goal. The achievement of that goal can only be reached with the use of violent action. When we watch Van Sant, we see that there isn’t a clear-cut separation between hero and enemy. The distinction is masked under a shallow veil of stereotypical teenage emotions where no one is the hero.

Are we an out of control culture with razor sharp teeth, inflicting death and destruction on the planet and its inhabitants for profit?  Or is it our collective media and popular culture with its supercharged imagery and sounds creating illusions that make us appear that way?  Maybe yet, there is an underlining American madness that mixes beautifully and keeps pace with our media’s selling of its pop culture.  If we have an international image and it’s imperialist and hated, then what is our identity as seen through art/film?  Our true collective identity is hidden but our films and media have built the most extensive and elaborate façade wrapped consumerism.  We are different and the difference  very clear when you look at the flow of images we produce.  When I watched “Elephant” and “Buongiorno Notte”, Italian, directed by Marco Bellocchio, I saw the difference.

Immersed in the American culture, one can only see this Van Sant detachment as a metaphor for a video game. However, it is important to make the distinction between reality and an artistic license. This is evident through his Kubrick-like tracks in the narrow hallways of the school giving a sense of isolation from society. The shallow close ups of the student’s backs create a facelessness and lack of identity towards the characters.  It is as if the students are moving like automobile traffic through the corridors. When the American audience is confronted with such portrayal it can only be seen as part of an American myth.  For an Italian a different reaction happens where the theater of violence becomes the culture of violence.  They see America’s powerful global image as almost imperialist and these “violent teens” as the future foot soldiers of expansionism.  The idea of seeing into the bowels of the American monster is a tantalizing force for the audience. Even more so, to see detached violent teenagers go mad, only seems to prove their criticism politically.  It is interesting that the specter of American corporate greed was never raised.  It’s always political imperialism and violence carried out by young Americans, that is the substantial part of our foreign image.

Van Sant builds a sense of foreboding, a coming of an unknown violence, by detaching the viewer from the characters and having the characters move around like video game ghosts. When we watch “Elephant”, we see that there isn’t a clear-cut separation between hero and enemy. The distinction is masked under a shallow veil of stereotypical teenage emotions where no one is or can be a hero.  Usually in American action films there is an achievement of a goal through the use of violence against the enemy.  When the lack distinction between hero and enemy is heightened to the point where the viewer becomes either numb or paranoid, then you have entered the world of invisible cultural violence.  Everybody in America is either a shooter or potential target. To my amazement Italians think that this film is an accurate window into the heart of America society and the way it works.  I wasn’t surprised to learn that they also believe American youth like the spectacle of killing.  “Elephant” is the terrorist film of the two; it’s a handbook on how Americans inflict emotionally detached horror on each other.

The first person shooter game has a place in world history.  Its architecture was used as a set design metaphor in “Elephant” with its foreboding passages allowing Van Sant to give the viewer a sense of an adrenalin infused hunt.  This is not a documentary of the Columbine massacre but a metaphor of the theater of violence that intrigues us all.  It is amoral violence, with no emotion or passion, and crowds cheering, just killing with the best weapons possible.  America and Japan are the biggest producers of video games but America is responsible for creating the genre and making the majority of violent first person shooters, including classics like “Doom” and “Half Life”.  In Italy, soccer is the popular video game genre but should not be seen as a metaphor for real Italian life, even with its over the top frenzied enthusiasm by the whole male population.  What’s interesting is that Italians come up with a definition for the American culture of violence by mixing video games plots and film and seeing reality.  Their violence stays in their emotions and does not spill into video games, but instead come out in their films.

“Buongiorno Notte” is a film that tells us about a violent episode of recent Italian history.  It was a time of left and right wing terrorism, demonstrations, bombings, kidnappings, kneecapping and the beginning of the great mafia wars.  It is very clear that Italy is not a country that is unfamiliar with violence but it always seems to be wrapped in a passionate morality motivated by politics, revenge or love.  This wave of political unrest ran parallel to the war in Vietnam but continued into the 80’s long after American student demonstrations ended in 1974 with the war’s end and the beginning of Watergate.  The culmination of the Italian period was the Aldo Moro kidnapping and murder by the Red Brigade and all the intrigue that surrounded it in 1978.  In Bellocchio’s narrative all the characters constantly live in an extreme set of circumstances.

One terrorist, Chiara, begins to question violent means to justify a political end, but more importantly she begins to emphasize with the victim Aldo Moro (the target).  This does not even come close to what’s happening for Van Sant’s America.  The more separate you are from your emotions the more chilling it gets.  For Bellocchio, the more you are in touch with your emotions the more terrifying it gets. “Buongiorno Notte” draws you into questioning chilling philosophies in the face of compassion.  It’s a tortured political action running against dignity (Moro), betrayal (the police and Christian Democrats) and time that make experiencing this film interesting.  In “Elephant”, philosophies are never questioned and you never identify with the killers, their victims, or their thoughts.

America as subject and metaphor has figured prominently in the Italian cinema startingwith Brignone's "Passaporto Rosso" (1935) and peaking with Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America” and still continues.  Immigration and the mythical saga of the crime family with its brutality and revenge were prominent themes.  Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West” takes this to hallucinatory levels.  His “Fist Full of Dollars” released right after the Kennedy assassination, is the new theater of American violence seen through the expansive west and the “close-ups” of individuals, mostly killers in the act of revenge and brutality.  Ultimately it’s political because it’s about the organized theft of money that is undermined by a lone “shooter warrior” that the audience identifies with.  In “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” the struggles between Death, Blonde and Tuco operate on a plane different from the masses, which are locked in the wasteful horrors of political war.  Their quest for gold through a “shot first and don’t bother with questions” approach is more noble than political war.  Both “The Good the Bad and the Ugly”(1964) and “Once Upon a Time in the West”, (1968) make an antiwar point through the use of an opera of violence.  The political left in Italy loved this but they also loved the expansiveness of Monument Valley and mythical characters that fill this landscape while screaming at us to get out of Vietnam.

It is important to note that this was the period of television’s worldwide explosion and America’s two major exported extravaganzas were the Kennedy Assassination, and the Vietnam War. Now with the release of “Buongiono Notte”, a film that speaks of the most violent episode of recent Italian history, we get an interesting picture.  It was a time of left and right wing terrorism, bombings, kidnapping, kneecapping and the beginning of the great mafia wars.  The culmination of the period and the window, through which Italians see these events, was the Aldo Moro kidnapping, murder and all the intrigue that surrounded it.  It’s their Kennedy assassination (Falcone and Borsellino come later), but missing all the hot TV images like the fantastic Zapruda film and Jack Ruby blasting Oswald on live TV. Mark Bellocchio’s  “Buongiono Notte” which gets its name from Emily Dickinson’s “Buongiorno-Mezzanotte”.  It’s violence is buried in the cinematography and narrative; it is not a represented event, it’s a mysterious clarity that you never see.  In this narrative all the characters live in an extreme set of circumstances.  One terrorist, Chiara, begins to question violent means to justify a political end, but more importantly she begins to emphasize with Aldo Moro (the victim).  You are drawn into questioning chilling philosophies in the face of compassion.  It’s the tortured political action running against dignity (Moro) and betrayal (by the authorities) that makes this film interesting.  In Elephant, no philosophies are questioned and you never identify with the killers or their victims, nor get into anyone’s thinking.  Van Sant gives us a video game overlay to represent his story and its violence.  Soon after “Buongiono Notte” was released there were arrests of supposed members of the Red Brigade.  Art spills over easily into politics more easily in Italy and then into the hands of the magistrates and police. Oliver Stones “JFK” could not achieve that, though in some ways it wanted to.

When violence is used in film it can be good and sometimes brilliant whether you see it or not.  Scorsese, Tanintino, Leone, Kitano, (to mention a few) portray it like colors from a palette.  Problems of perception, cultural misinterpretation, and political expediency arise, when the theater of violence, is overlaid with the media’s presentation of the culture of violence.  Globalization has made things worse.  People in other cultures are fascinated or overly criticize our culture and ignore what we detest or are struggling with. The wrong stuff travels to foreign markets adding to the misconceptions.  Film festivals help, but most people see films in their local theater controlled by laws distribution and profit.  Democracy does not help because it can’t guarantee the freedom of expression.  Ultimately it about us as spectators not being trapped in the media’s hall of mirrors and taste.  Maybe it is this simple: American violence just sells better.  Films like City of God are a different case.  They are always foreign and have the exotic allure of taking you in to another world, that is violent and cool. . 

Both films are great examples of the theater of violence. The beauty of “Buongiorno Notte” lies in the grand embellishment of a dark force that you never see. The character masks constantly change from political power, to passion, and ultimately to the mask of death.  In “Elephant” the dark phantom is the impending violence that waits for you behind every turn of a corner.  There are no embellishments; all the demons and victims wear the same costumes.

Peter Bardazzi

November 2003

 

Scene from the

“Caravaggio Police”

Assassin: #1

Ray always walked around with a gun in his head and if you looked into his eyes you saw it.  He was scary but he was not like the rest of them.  The others were thugs; they killed for greed, saving face, pleasing a boss and power or were acting out some deep bestial rage.   When Ray whacked some guy it was like he was solving a problem.  Lou and I knew he had fallen from a hell to a far worse place and was constantly plotting his way out.  We liked talking about the guys who were different and who had intense style.  We put them in this bizarre imaginary comedy that we constantly ran especially during school fire drills. But for Ray it was one giant chess game going off in a hundred directions with some of the moves requiring death.   The other thing about Ray is that you always felt like he was leaving the space he was occupying.  Not coming or going but leaving the whole planet.   It was weird, even if he was coming towards you felt like he was leaving.  There must have been power in that because none of the crews had a hold on him.

One day coming home from school Ray asked to look at the book I was carrying.  It was an art history book.  He went through it and stopped on the page where there was a reproduction of Caravaggio’s David Holding the Severed Head of Goliath.  He looked at it a long time, which surprised me.  Then he turned the book upside down and asked me “where is he from?”   I said “Italian 17th century”.  That wasn’t the right answer for him but it didn’t matter, Ray liked me.  Many years later I learned the answer to that question and wanted to tell him, but it was too late.  The superstar assassin was gone.   

 

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