Adapted from Roberto Saviano's controversial non-fiction book, Matteo Garrone's crime drama Gomorrah examines how organized crime reaches deep into every facet of life in Naples, Italy by telling the tale of over a dozen different characters. Among the main protagonists is a pair of wannabe thugs who take their cue from movie gangsters, a grocery-delivery boy who must learn to kill, and a criminal mastermind who plots to make a fortune while dumping toxic waste near overpopulated communities. ~
Perry Seibert, Rovi
Gomorra has its own nerve, as well as the filmmaking intelligence to strip the cliches from its densely packed, authentically inhabited narrative. The new moviegoing year just got one hell of a jolt.
The sense of authenticity in this movie is palpable, but the scenes are sometimes so dark and so impenetrable that it takes a herculean effort to keep up with who's who and what's going on.
Garrone's gloomy assessment of the new world order is painfully on target: corruption comes in many guises, and it's as impossible to stop as it is to track.
Thug-life fantasies here provide lures into ruthlessly complex realities and rigmaroles - slamming characters' faces into the rug before it's pulled from beneath them. The notion that anybody could be a don dies in a blaze of energy, rage and ambition.
Despite its disjointed structure, Gomorrah comes to a narrative convergence without ever actually having to bring its stories together. Each climaxes independently, yet it all feels like one piece.
By fashioning its stories to get in as much impact as possible, mostly from the stark ugliness of their realities and their bold endings, the movie achieves a satisfying level of effectiveness.
[Matteo] Garrone... brings a clear-eyed approach to the film and captures an atmosphere of destruction and waste in a landscape of urban blight and poverty.
Drably redundant, the over-praised Gomorrah may not deserve the Criterion treatment, but fans will be pleased by the solid audio/video treatment it has received.
It is a challenging approach, and while there is suspense and action (including a spectacular car crash), there is frustration as a result of the regular cutting from one story to another.
We don't get to know the characters, exactly, but we experience something more interesting: we are brought into disconcerting, almost documentary proximity with the lives they lead and the worlds they inhabit.
Gomorra is one of those films that seemingly comes out of nowhere. It isn't a complex film with a lot of plot details or major characters to deal with. Rather it spends its time with various groups of people, living their daily lives in dark places. What I like most about the film is how dirty it is. It's nowhere near
clean or clear-cut. You feel dirty just being a part of the world as you experience it and can't really escape, which is what the film's characters are going through. You're just sort of dropped in this world and the only way out is by either dying or shutting the film off. It suffers slightly from a slow pace, but storywise it really keeps you on edge. If you're looking for comparisons, here's an easy one: if Traffic and The Departed got married and had an Italian child, it would be Gomorra. Not the best of comparisons, but it's pretty accurate.
August 31, 2011
Tim Salmons
Super Reviewer
Histórias de pessoas que tentam sobreviver num suburbio, onde a lei do mais forte à (C) a que vale. Matteo Garrone nos mostra uma realidade que poucos conhecem das familias de classe baixa mà (C)dia italianas, que enfrentam a mafia napolitana. Realista e polêmico.
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