Then in between the creative writing and the Kafka paperwork this week, finally got a chance to see Gomorra with a friend/film colleague. I thought it was gripping and tense, but it wasn’t the absolute master piece everybody had been raving about. My friend David was less convinced and made the point that it wasn’t showing him anything he hadn’t seen yet in the raw urban crime films and TV shows. Then I realised that I knew some of the actual background of Napoli (as it’s one of my favourite cities in Europe), so that helps a little bit of understanding the context of the actions. I had also read parts of the original book by the author Roberto Saviano. He’s now in hiding with government protection as the Mafia have put a price on his life.

In a nutshell, I think the problem with Gomorra is the micro-cosm it presents, while never allowing the audience to really grasp the macro-scale of things going on, and the whole food chain. An unofficial hierarchy of crime exploitating on the smallest of human levels.

Without this back knowledge we miss the whole exposure of the Camorra’s modus operandi, which was deliberately to show the sordid anti-thesis of the more glorified Mafia myths like The Godfather.

The original narrative in the written form began after all as a piece of investigative journalism.

There are many opponents of voice-over, but e.g.if Casino didn’t have it, less of the machinery/food chain that formed Vegas would be clear. The key to these things is usually the place the city as a protagonist and we didn’t get one shot of the wonderfully loud and colourful Napoli or the ports, which is the center of their wealth.

But besides sorely missing all that multi-leveled knowledge, I thought it was a very tense piece of film making, the energy often contained in the pressure cooker of what’s going on between the actual killings. And death always comes unexpected, the warring creatures naked in all their sordid violence.

Check it out.

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