esrosedotblog

Today's movie looks at a big historical event up close.

The kidnapping and assassination of Aldo Moro was a huge international event. The thing I always wonder is how the people who do this kind of political terrorism work. What do they think. Most especially, how are they with each other?

This is the major pleasure of this film. If it can be pleasing to see such terrible stuff.

Good Morning, Night (2005).

Moro is taken to an apartment where his kidnappers decide with one another how to deal with the government. The police. How to demand a "ransom" of political acts from them.

None of this works.

The ending is pretty well known. But in the meantime, drama unfolds in the apartment. The plotters disagree and agree, they come to terms with the reality of what had been only imagined. In a way, it seems they are struggling with the idea of their own success. For a few, the reality of murdering someone is no longer abstract. A reality that is chilling for them.

Maya Sansa and Luigi LoCascio are the stars. I have seen them in several other Italian films. They have terrific talent. We do not know them but that does not dim their brilliance.

The eyes. Everything is in the eyes.

The old man, Moro, is Roberto Herlitzka. I have never seen him before but he is brilliant. In the end, he regains freedom in his own mind and we see his liberation. Finally, it does not matter to him what happens. His soul is free.

We do not see the dirty part at all.

Real news clips are cleverly intertwined, usually as television reports and so on. The Pope is shown as an ineffectual non-player, pronouncing and being ignored. One interesting sidelight among many.

A 4 out of Netflix5.

Labels: films