Gomorrah
Director: Brian Hecker
The title of Matteo Garrone’s multiple narrative of corruption, an award winner at Cannes 2008, refers both to the biblical town of sin and to the Camorra families of Naples, the crime syndicate that Hollywood forgot.
The Sicilian mobsters of The Godfather get all the attention, but a sobering collection of facts provided by Garrone tots up the damage the Camorra does off the radar: Among other things, it’s responsible for 4,000 deaths over the past 30 years.
Garrone waits until the end credits to list the Camorra’s ills, and by then it’s almost beside the point. They would have been more useful at the start, to assist in negotiating the thicket of characters and incidents the director has extracted from Roberto Saviano’s best-selling crime exposé, also titled Gomorrah.
Repeat viewings, if you can bear them, also improve comprehension. It’s best, though, to forsake plot and just follow the characters, as Garrone’s nimble camera does with documentary immediacy.
