Movie Review: Dogman

Dogman *** / *****

Directed by: Matteo Garrone,

Written by: Ugo Chiti & Matteo Garrone & Massimo Gaudioso and Marco Perfetti & Damiano D'Innocenzo & Fratelli D'Innocenzo & Giulio Troli.

Starring: Marcello Fonte (Marcello), Edoardo Pesce (Simoncino), Nunzia Schiano (Madre Simoncino), Adamo Dionisi (Franco), Francesco Acquaroli (Proprietario Videolottery), Gianluca Gobbi (Proprietario Ristorante), Alida Baldari Calabria (Alida), Laura Pizzirani (Madre Alida), Giancarlo Porcacchia (Gasparone), Aniello Arena (Ispettore Polizia).

 

Poor Marcello. The protagonist of Italian director Matteo Garrone’s latest, obvious allegory Dogman is a simple man. In his dead-end Italian town – where everything, and everyone is just a little bit dirty – he has carved out a tiny niche for himself. He has a dog grooming business – it’s not much, but it’s his. He has a circle of friends – the other shopkeepers in the area, who are nice enough. He has a daughter he adores – and an ex-wife who is basically nice enough to him. All he really wanted was this simple, small life. That would be enough to make him happy. And, of course, he’ll mess it all up.

 

The mess he makes begins before the movie does. To make some extra money, he deals a little cocaine on the side – although, he only seems to have one customer – Simoncino (Edoardo Pesce) for the cocaine. Simoncino is a violent thug – he basically terrorizes everyone in town, none of whom can really do anything to stop him. He doesn’t even pay for the cocaine – or much of anything else. Everyone else hates Simoncino – the other shopkeepers even discuss hiring someone from out of town to “take care of him” – but Marcello is drawn to him anyway. As played by Marcello Fonte, Marcello is a small man – think Al Pacino circa The Godfather – and he will never command the kind of respect and fear that Simoncino does. But when he hangs out with Simoncino – he gets a taste of what it must be like. Simoncino is a short tempered psychopath – he never really thinks through any of his actions, and he doesn’t much care. Marcello isn’t like that – he even returns to a crime scene when he hears Simoncino and his partner threw a Chihuahua into a freezer to save the little pup.

 

The film is basically a rather blunt and obvious allegory about the seduction of power. Simoncino is a stand-in for the mafia or fascism – groups that wield enormous power, and how that power can be seductive to someone like Marcello, who has no power of his own. If he just goes along with them, he’ll get that power too. Of course, the powerful don’t think about the Marcello’s of the world as much as the Marcellos think about the power. The Marcellos are meaningless to them – people they can use and discard when they are done with them. And sometimes, the Marcellos snap.

 

Yes, the allegory is rather obvious – particularly since Garrone has done something similar before, most notably in Gomorrah. But everything else in the movie is far better than the obvious message. Fonte is legitimately great in this role – a small, but basically good man, who gets in over his head – (somewhat) willingly, and then are burned by the harsh truth. He really does remind you of a younger Pacino – perhaps a younger Dustin Hoffman – as he gets sucked in and cannot get out. The film looks terrific as well. We’re used to seeing the beautiful Italy on screen – but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this Italy before. It’s dirty and dusty and rundown. It’s a small, dead-end town – just like small dead-end towns everywhere. The people in it are sad and powerless – and can turn on you quickly.

I do wish that the film was a little less blunt in its messaging – and perhaps, given Marcello a little more agency. Everything he does seems logical in many ways – even when he starts making increasingly bad decisions, he does so out of fear more than anything else (or at least, it can be read that way). I kind of wish he was more responsible than he ends up being for his own downfall – because I think that is what the film is trying to say.

 

Still, it’s a fine film – a kind of return to form after 2015’s Tale of Tales for Garrone, a film that looked great, but I didn’t much care for. Its ambitions are small scale – but real. And subtlety has never really been Garrone’s style. Dogman is a fine film – but it probably could have and should have been better – especially since the ending is an appropriate, sick gut punch.

Movie Review: Tale of Tales

Tale of Tales

Directed by: Matteo Garrone.   

Written by: Edoardo Albinati & Ugo Chiti & Matteo Garrone & Massimo Gaudioso based on the books by Giambattista Basile.

Starring: Salma Hayek (Queen of Longtrellis), Vincent Cassel (King of Strongcliff), Toby Jones (King of Highhills), John C. Reilly (King of Longtrellis), Shirley Henderson (Imma), Hayley Carmichael (Dora), Bebe Cave (Violet), Stacy Martin (Young Dora), Christian Lees (Elias), Jonah Lees (Jonah), Laura Pizzirani (Jonah's Mother), Franco Pistoni (Necromancer), Jessie Cave (Fenizia), Guillaume Delaunay (Ogre).

 

Matteo Garrone’s international breakthrough film, 2008’s Gomorrah, was a film documenting the modern day Mafia in and around Naples, which wanted to portray their actions with documentary-style realism. The film was a hit around the world, and won Garrone the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes. His 2012 follow-up, Reality, won that same prize at Cannes – but wasn’t nearly the hit its predecessor was. I have to say now, though, that a few years removed from both films, it is Reality that has stayed with me – its observations about celebrity culture and reality TV, the realism edging into fantasy as the film progressed, and its fine lead performance (by a convicted murderer), stuck with me more than Gomorrah’s undeniable anger and power. His most recent film, Tale of Tales, complete the journey from realism to fairy tale of Reality, as Garrone as adapted three tales from Giambattisa Basile, an Italian writer, who was an inspiration for the Grimm brothers. The darkness, violence and sexual underpinnings of those original, well-known Grimm fairy tales are all here in Tale of Tales and foregrounded. The film has a wonderful visual look – it’s clearly been done on a budget, but I love the special effects just the same. Yet, despite the great look, and a very talented cast, the movie never really goes anywhere. At Two hours, fifteen minutes, it’s a good hour too long for the very slight trio of tales Garrone is telling, and the film ends up going around in circles, before ultimately coming to its very obvious conclusions. There is talent and inventiveness in every frame of the film – it just doesn’t lead anywhere.

 

The trio of tales Garrone tells here all involved royalty (where precisely these kingdoms are, I have no idea, but apparently they are very close to each other). In one, a Queen (Salma Hayek), is so desperate for a child that she cannot conceive that she is willing to sacrifice anything to get one – including sending her husband (John C. Reilly) to fight a giant sea monster, so she can consume its heart and get pregnant. The virgin she needs to prepare that heart though also eats some of it – and so the two women, the Queen and the peasant, end up with nearly identical, albino offspring – who are best friends, no matter how hard the Queen tries to keep them apart. In the second story, Vincent Cassel plays a womanizing King, who thinks only with his penis. There are two old sisters in his kingdom, and one day he wakes up next to one of them – and is so disgusted by what occurred, he has his guards throw the old woman out the window – before she hits the ground however, she is saved – and transformed into a beautiful young woman – exactly the kind of woman the King who tried to kill her wants. She doesn’t seek vengeance however – but his love, and gets it, at the sacrifice of her sister. In the third, another King (Toby Jones) become so obsessed with his pet flea – that grows to the size of a hippo – that he allows his daughter (Bebe Cave) to be married off to an ogre – who suffers greatly in the early days of that marriage, and tries her best to escape it.

 

The “message” all of three fairy tales are quite clear – in each, someone sacrifices or ruins what should be pure love, chasing after something else. If the Queen accepted her son’s friendship with his doppelganger, everyone could have lived in happiness – instead, she forces her son to make some choices that he doesn’t even realize he is making. If the sister just accepted the love of her other sister, instead of chasing after a king who tried to kill her, the shocking last act of her sister would never have occurred. And if the King had spent more time with his daughter instead of his giant flea, she wouldn’t have been married off to and raped by an ogre. No one said fairy tales had to be subtle – and these ones certainly are not.

 

Of the three of these, really only the story of the King, his flea, his daughter and the ogre works from beginning to end. There are enough twists and turns in the story – enough strange images, and action, to sustain most of its running time. Jones is in fine form as the crazy King, and newcomer Cave is excellent as his traumatized daughter, who still finds the strength to fight back. And well, I have to say, I’ve never seen a giant flea before. The story of the two sisters and the womanizing King works least – probably because it sets up its stakes early, and then just keeps on repeating them over and over again – dragging things out for so long, only to reach the exact endpoint we’d been expected for a long time. The Queen and her son, falls somewhere in the middle – there are good moments, and a fine finale, although that comes surprisingly early in the film.

 

A bigger problem may be how Garrone cuts between the stories – which he does with little rhyme or reason. He may have been better served to simply let all three stories play out one at a time, and build to their climaxes (this also may have helped him realize they all run way too long). Instead, we go back and forth between the three stories seemingly at random. There is a real art to cutting between stories like this – the only real rule is that there has to be some kind of logic in how you do it – similar plot points, emotional points, etc. (the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer’s underrated Cloud Atlas does this wonderfully well). Garrone doesn’t get it.

 

The result is a movie I wanted to like – there is so many interesting visuals throughout the film, and I love dark fairy tales – but ultimately couldn’t. The damn movie just goes on and on, with no real point to it all. If Garrone had, say, added a fourth story, edited them all down into one, 90 minute movie, with one story following after another, he really may have had something here. Instead, he has a giant mess.

Movie Review: Reality

Reality
Directed by:  Matteo Garrone.
Written by: Matteo Garrone & Massimo Gaudioso & Ugo Chiti & Maurizio Braucci.
Starring: Aniello Arena (Luciano), Loredana Simioli (Maria), Nando Paone (Michele), Nello Iorio (Massimone), Nunzia Schiano (Aunt Nunzia), Rosaria D'Urso (Aunt Rosaria), Giuseppina Cervizzi (Giusy), Claudia Gerini (TV hostess), Raffaele Ferrante (Enzo).

Matteo Garrone’s Reality is about the fame obsessed culture that we live in today. It looks at an average Joe – Luciano (Aniello Arena), who is happy with his lot in life. He runs a modest fish stand in Naples, loves his wife Maria (Loredana Simioli) and his children, and has a large, bickering extended family he enjoys. At parties, he dresses in drag to amuse the children, and anyone else around. It is a modest life, but he’s happy and fulfilled. That is until he auditions to be on the hit Italian version of Big Brother. We first see that glint of envy in his eye at a wedding, where Enzo (Raffaele Ferrante) shows up as a special guest – he was made a star by the show the previous year, and now his life consists of doing these sorts of appearances, and being whisked away on a private helicopter. His kids convince Luciano to audition for the show himself – and after a successful first one, he is given a callback in Rome – which he feels he has nailed. There is no way they are not going to pick him to be on the show. He is so convinced that he about to become a star, he gives up everything else in his life. And yet, the show never calls.

Most of the movie takes place in between his auditions and when Luciano has finally go completely over the edge into some sort of insanity. He knows he has nailed the audition. That the producers, and the psychologist who interviewed him, got to know the “real” Luciano – meaning the reality TV show version of himself that he starts to think is more real than reality. So when the producers don’t call, Luciano thinks there must be a reason for that. He becomes increasingly paranoid – he thinks that every person he meets must have been sent from the show to see how he really is. He wants them to think he’s outgoing, gregarious and charitable – so he gives a bunch of poor people most of his family’s stuff. And yet, they still don’t call.

The film reminded me of Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy (1983) – which becomes more prophetic with each passing year. Both films center around a man who he is convinced he is destined for greatness – and even though he is constantly rejected, never quite seems to realize it. When we see some clips from the show Luciano thinks he is supposed to be on, we know right away that there is no mistake that he wasn’t picked. The people on the show are all younger – and more beautiful – and are willing to degrade themselves in every conceivable way to be on TV. Well, so is Luciano, except for the young and beautiful part. He’s never going to be on the show because people don’t want to see someone like him on TV.

Aniello Arena, who plays Luciano, delivers an excellent performance. Currently, Arena is serving time in jail for a double murder – he used to be a Mafia hit man. Garrone saw him in a prison stage production (I’m thinking something like the one shown in the recent Caesar Must Die) and wanted him to play a role in his last film – the Mafia film Gommora – but wasn’t allowed to cast him. Somehow, he was allowed to cast him this time around (although, apparently after filming stopped, he had to go back to jail, where he still has 8 years remaining on his prison sentence). Whether Arena can play any other role when his jail time is up remains to be seen – but he’s just about perfect in Reality. Perhaps have spent two decades behind bars helped him to play Luciano, who is wide eyed and amazed at the world of fame all around him (which may seem even stranger to someone, who in jail, wouldn’t have seen the slow change first hand as the rest of us had). Perhaps, Arena is just a brilliant actor. But whatever the case, his Luciano makes a great Rupert Pupkin.

Garrone’s storytelling remains slightly messy – this was one of the strengths of Gommora, which was unwieldy in its scope as it jumped from one scene to next with amazing speed. But this film remains focused on Luciano, and as a result, the more sudden shifts in tone, the addition of several subplots that are then abandoned, are more of a problem this time around (I am not sure what precisely Garrone is saying about religion in this film for example – but he obviously had something in mind). And yet, when the film focuses Luciano, and his slow descent into madness, it is top notch. Garrone may be saying something about Italian culture in Reality – but really, it’s themes are universal.

Movie Review - Gomorrah

Gomorrah ****
Directed by: Matteo Garrone.
Written By: Maurizio Braucci & Ugo Chiti & Gianni Di Gregorio & Matteo Garrone & Massimo Gaudioso & Roberto Saviano based on the book by Roberto Saviano.
Starring: Salvatore Abruzzese (Totò), Gianfelice Imparato (Don Ciro), Salvatore Cantalupo (Pasquale), Marco Macor (Marco), Ciro Petrone (Ciro), Toni Servillo (Franco), Carmine Paternoster (Roberto), Maria Nazionale (Maria).

Gomorrah is a different kind of gangster movie. It is a film devoid of all the glamour we are used to seeing with movies about the mob. Being a gangster has often been portrayed as fun in the movies, and even when the “heroes” of these films meet their inevitable downfall, they seem to go out in a blaze or glory, forever cementing their immortality. There is none of that in Gomorrah. This is a film that looks at the inner works of the Camorra, Italy’s “Other Mafia” – the one we don’t hear about very often. They envision themselves almost like a large multinational corporation. The people at the top are making billions, while the ones underneath get exploited and killed – and often they don’t even know who they are being killed for. This isn’t a movie that concentrates on the big guys – this is one that concentrates on the small guys.

The film is based on the bestselling book by Roberto Saviano, who has been under police protection since the book’s publication in 2006. The book gained notoriety not because it was the first book about the Camorra – it wasn’t – but because of the insider’s view it had, and the bravery Savinao showed in naming names. Saviano was never apart of the Camorra, but he was connected to it – everyone in Naples seems to be in one way or another.

From the book, director Matteo Garrone and his five co-writers, including Saviano, have picked out five separate stories. One is about a young boy, Toto, who desperately wants to be apart of the Camorra, goes through a cruel, grueling initiation, and is eventually used to help in the murder of a supposed informant, who he was close to. Another is about two teenagers, who view themselves as Tony Montana’s (Al Pacino in Scarface for those who don’t know). They are brazen in that they will steal from anyone, and brush aside warnings from the Camorra until there are no warnings left. Another involves a tailor, who slaves away making high quality dresses for little to no money, and gets wrath brought down upon himself when he dares to share his secrets with the Camorra’s Chinese competition. Another is about a man whose lone job it is to go around and deliver money to the relatives of Camorra gangsters who have wound up dead or is prison, and has to deal with the constant complaints of the people who want more. And finally, there is the story of a man who helps companies dispose of their toxic waste at rock bottom prices – because he’ll dump it just about anywhere there is room – and his young apprentice (who could easily be a stand in for Saviano) who eventually becomes sick of what they are doing.

If I have made this movie sound something akin to Babel or Crash, let me say now it isn’t. These characters are not really connected with each, except that they are all apart of the same system of corruption. The film offers no answers for what it portrays, no deeper meaning, no moralizing. It simply shows, in almost documentary like realism, they day in, day out of their lives that are constantly interrupted by violence. Director Garrone pays obvious homage to many of Italy’s great filmmakers – there are shots and themes that echo Rosi, Fellini, Rossellini, Antonioni along with many others – but this a film unto itself. The acting is universally excellent, while never drawing attention to itself. The violence is strong and constant. The movie offers no answers, no moralizing. It’s simply a portrait of corruption and greed and how the Camorra infests everything it touches – rotting it from the inside out. Some will undoubtedly complain that the movie doesn’t tie everything together, that there appears to be no story, no message. But that is one of the movies strengths, not one of its weaknesses. No one in the film – including the audience - comes away clean.