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The Hand of God

Posted on March 8, 2022April 27, 2022 by Village Vidiot

“The Hand of God,” (subtitles), March 8, 2022 (2021), Netflix.  Writer/director Paolo Sorrentino chronicles his late adolescence in this look at a transitional moment in his life with the coming of Diego Mardona to Naples soccer and family tragedies.  In many ways, this one emulates Fellini’s “Amacord,” one of my favorite films.  It’s the passage of time and transition in the life of a young man, (Fabietto, Filippo Scotti).  Although Fellini’s boyhood saw the cruel insanity of fascism, this one is the empty culture of the 1980s.  Both were, however, Communist families even as Fellini’s father was a construction foreman and Sorrentino’s a bank employee or manager.  Both are petty bourgeois in so many playful ways.  The whole family is wonderfully presented and father and mother (Toni Servillo and Teresa Saponangelo) are lovingly crafted.  Sorrentino even goofs on Fellini’s fetish for bizarre-looking actors, and the obsession with Rome as a focus of life.  But both are family stories, and this one includes a spectacularly beautiful aunt (Louisa Ranieri).  Other Italian directors enter the scene as foils or mentors as he determines to make movies, and Ciro Capano’s Capuano provides the anarchic mentoring the boy needs.  Still while including loving bows and testimonials to Italian greats, the film doesn’t always hang together with consistent flow and the focus breaks down and slows over time.  I enjoyed this Oscar-nominated film although I felt it wanting greater narrative balance.

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