Gomorra [Gomorrah]

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© A.J. Malouin 2009

(Rating: 1 by The Film Snob.)
(See our side-bar page “How Caryl & Al and The Film Snob Rate Movies”)

(2008/Italy. Directed by Matteo Garrone.)
If you want the grim evidence that crime doesn’t pay, no look further than “Gomorrah.” Told with a documentary-style minimalism, “Gomorrah” follows the daily lives of the lower-echelon criminals in modern-day Naples.

The criminals are part of the Camorra. Less-advertised and less-famous than the Mafia — but highly more successful — the Camorra is reputed to take in more than 250 billion dollars (U.S.) annually.

Unlike the romantic and luxurious lifestyles we’ve come to expect in gangster films, however, the criminal lifestyles here are grim and grimy. Kill or be killed are the two alternatives in “Gomorrah,” and there is no money at all floating around while the alternatives are being decided.

As befits the dead-end lives they lead, the most-glamous gangsters in “Gomorrah” engage in the illegal dumping of dangerous, poisonous toxic waste. There is a wonderful set piece about what happens when this goes wrong.

The film centers around delivery boy, a tailor, a businessman and two cocky teenagers. The delivery boy aspires to join the Camorra, and runs around looking for small tasks he can do to win their favor.

The tailor has decided to moonlight by selling his company’s trade secrets to the Chinese factory which is doing fashion knock-offs. He works in the Chinese factory all night long. He goes to and from the factory in the trunk of a sedan.

The businessman is an accountant of sorts who delivers “pensions” to families whose members have died or gone to prison in the service of the Camorra. The businessman doesn’t even have a car, and makes his deliveries on foot or bicycle. Families receiving this pension complain bitterly about its low amount. “My wife has gone to jail for you, and you expect me to live on *this*?” one old man whines. “Tell them I can’t do it!”

The two cocky teenagers get it in their head that they can carve out their own territory inside the turf of the Camorra. They are summoned to the home of a Camorra lieutenant, who tells them to “back down.” They laugh at the warning and later laugh again, saying “That fat old man! The least he could do was shave before he saw us.”

The two continue underestimating the Camorra right up to the end of the picture.

Much of the film takes place in the high-rise low-income apartment buildings of Naples. These visuals alone are worth the price of the rental.

In one wonderful set piece, Camorra dump trucks and tankers are emptying toxic waste in an abandoned gravel quarry. One of the union drivers the Camorra has hired becomes infected by the waste material. The rest of the drivers refuse to move. The on-site Camorra lieutenant says, “We still own these trucks and we gotta get them out of here!” He then goes off to hire a gaggle on nine-year-olds, who swam the trucks and move them out of the quarry.

“Gomorrah” is full of close-up, off-center shots, each of which tells us tons about each character. There are no “mood shots.” Every scene documents the lean-and-clean (and dirt-poo) business-like motivations of the characters.

In his review of it, Roger Ebert relates that “Gomorrah” was the foreign film which Italy submitted to the 2008 Academy Awards. With no “good guys” in it and with no feeling of hopefulness to it, however, the Academy ignored their submission.

You, OTOH, should not ignore “Gomorrah.” It is the perfectly wrought and wonderfully realized antithesis of “Goodfellas” and the Godfather films.

(2 hr 17. Not rated in the USA. In Italian, Mandarin, and French, with English subtitles in the USA. With Salvatore Abruzzese as Totò, Simone Sacchettino as Simone, Salvatore Ruocco as Boxer, Vincenzo Fabricino as Pitbull, Vincenzo Altamura as Gaetano, Italo Renda as Italo, Gianfelice Imparato as Don Ciro, Maria Nazionale as Maria, Salvatore Striano as Scissionista, Carlo Del Sorbo as Don Carlo, Vincenzo Bombolo as Bombolone, Toni Servillo as Franco, Carmine Paternoster as Roberto, Alfonso Santagata as Dante Serini, and Massimo Emilio Gobbi as Imprenditore.)