In 2006, the Italian journalist Robert Saviano published Gomorrah, a daring, no-holds-barred book about the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia. It was a bestseller in Italy and has since done well in foreign markets as well, being issued in 40 countries.
The title was no accident. The world Saviano describes in his book operates on principles that would not have been incongruous in the Old Testament cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Brutal violence, murder and rape, gun-running, extortion and corruption on a grand scale all feature in this exposé of the vast, powerful and deeply entrenched networks the Camorra have established.
Saviano paid heavily for his diligence. He lives in hiding, with police protection. The Mafia put a price on his head. Shops and restaurant owners feared doing business with him.
The following year, a young Italian film director, Matteo Garrone, in collaboration with Saviano, made a feature film based on the book. It, too, has done well - winning the Grand Prize at Cannes and being named best film at the European Film Awards. Now, riding the crest of $23-million in worldwide box-office revenues, the $5-million film has opened commercially in North America and is rolling out across Canada.
Be warned, however: Gomorrah is not an easy film to watch. That's partly because of the violence, which is as uncompromising as the Camorra itself and partly a function of its structure. In some respects, the film resembles Paul Haggis's Crash or Robert Altman's Shortcuts or Roberto Rossellini's Paisà, a major influence on Garrone, in its multiple stories. But here, while there are five distinct plot lines, they don't, on first viewing at least, quite mesh. There's little or no exposition. The viewer is forced to stumble through the labyrinth just like a resident of Scampia and Secondigliano, the Naples gritty suburbs where the film was shot.
When I interviewed Garrone last fall at the Toronto International Film Festival, he made clear that his film is not so much an attack on the Camorra as it is about what it feels like to be on the inside of the organization. That, distinction - the de facto claim of neutrality on ethical issues - is what he hopes will enable him to live normally and continue making films in Italy.
The son of a theatre critic, Garrone, 40, said he had started work on his film before Saviano's book was published, but later persuaded him to get involved. Saviano shares a writing credit with Maurizio Braucci.
While shooting, Garrone was tempted to hide the explosive subject matter from local residents, fearing for the safety of the actors and crew. But in fact, he found that most people wanted to help him - they wanted to be sure that what he shot was authentic in its details. And when he wasn't sure, he asked them.
Most people, Garrone said, think that films like Scarface, Raging Bull, The Godfather, Donnie Brasco and others are based on the reality of Mafia life. But the reverse phenomenon is also true, he maintains - that real-life gangsters model their lives on what they see in the cinema. In Gomorrah, we see the palatial villa of one Camorrista chief, now in jail, who instructed his architect to build it to the exact specifications of the villa used by Tony Montana in Brian de Palma's Scarface.
Naples, says Garrone, is like another country entirely. "It was shocking to me that such an alien place could exist only two hours from my home in Rome." Even the Neapolitan dialect is different, and so difficult that when the film was screened in Italy, it was shown in Italian - with subtitles.
Most of the actors were drawn from Italian stage and film, including Toni Servillo, a huge star in Italy, who played former Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti in Il Divo. But in the neorealist tradition of Italian cinema, Garrone also hired several actors who were prison inmates and former Camorristas to play parts. They were paid, but some of them had to return to prison at the end of each day's shoot.
"I wanted them for their faces," Garrone explained, "because for me the film has an anthropological value."
One can read the movie on different levels, he says. "It's about the Camorra, but it's also about all the other Mafias around the world. It's easy to be ensnared. People need work. They have little education. They're offered big money, guns, power. The alternative is not so attractive."
And by the end, Garrone found the ethical questions, apart from murder, not so simple. "I used to see it as black and white, good versus evil, pure and simple. But when I left [Naples] I could see the justification, the rationale, for a young person choosing to join a gang and live that life. And it's only after you choose that you realize that you're trapped."
Gomorrah is now playing in Toronto. It opens in Ottawa on March 27 and Vancouver on April 3, with other cities to follow.