Paolo Sorrentino got fully nine
minutes of applause at the Venice Film FestivalThursday night
for his E' Stata La Mano Di Dio (It Was The Hand Of God), the
Great Beauty Oscar winner's first semi-autobiographical film
featuring his idolization of soccer great and Naples' favourite
adopted son Diego Maradona.
The new film, which debuted in Venice, is Sorrentino's most
personal yet and recounts his teen years and the loss of his
parents at the age of 16.
The synopsis on the fest's website says The story of a young
man's heartbreak and liberation in Naples, Italy. It's the 1980s
and 17-year old Fabietto Schisa might be an awkward Italian teen
struggling to find his place, but he finds joy in an amazing
family who love life, relish mischief and take deep pleasure in
meddling in one another's complicated relationships. Then comes
a pair of events that alter everything. One is the triumphant
arrival in Naples of a god-like athletic legend: high-flying
soccer idol Maradona, who has Fabietto, and the whole scrappy
city, feeling a pride that once seemed impossible.
The other is an inconceivable accident that will drop the bottom
out of Fabietto's world—setting his future in motion. Seemingly
saved by Maradona, touched by chance or the hand of God,
Fabietto wrestles with the nature of fate, the confusion of
loss, and the intoxicating freedom of being alive. In his most
movingly personal film, Sorrentino takes audiences on a sensory
journey bursting with the contrasts of tragedy and comedy, love
and desire, absurdity and beauty, as Fabietto finds the only way
out of total catastrophe through his own imagination.
The website quotes Sorrentino as saying: "The Hand of God is a
coming-of-age story that aims, stylistically, to avoid the traps
of conventional autobiography: hyperbole, victimhood, pity,
compassion, and the indulgence of pain, through a simple,
sparse, and essential staging and with neutral, sober music and
photography.
"Cinematography's apparatus will take a step back so as to let
the life of those years speak, in the way I remember them—in the
way I experienced them, felt them. Simply put, this is a film
about sensibility. And hovering above everything, so close and
yet so far, is Maradona, that ghostly idol, five foot five, who
seemed to sustain the lives of everyone in Naples, or at least
mine."
Sorrentino's latest is among five Italian movies that will be
in the running for the Golden Lion.
The others are Mario Martone's 'Qui Rido Io', Gabriele
Mainetti's 'Freaks Out', Michelangelo Frammartino's 'Il buco'
and 'America Latina,' a thriller by brothers Fabio and Damiano
D'Innocenzo.
Sorrentino's 2013 film La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty) won
the Academy Award, the Golden Globe and the BAFTA Award for Best
Foreign Language Film.
The attention of the film world turns Friday to Denis
Villeneuve's Dune, a new adaptation of the Frank Herbert sci-fi
classic novel.
A mythic and emotionally charged hero's journey, Dune tells the
story of Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born
into a great destiny beyond his understanding, who must travel
to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the
future of his family and his people. As malevolent forces
explode into conflict over the planet's exclusive supply of the
most precious resource in existence—a commodity capable of
unlocking humanity's greatest potential—only those who can
conquer their fear will survive.
Frenc-Canadian director Villeneuve, who found acclaim with
Sicario, Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, said: "Adapt or die. It
was my mantra while doing Dune. The desert has its ways of
bringing you back to your true self and ridding you of rotten
habits. You have to evolve to survive the experience. Making
this film answered an old call, with deeper roots than I
imagined. It had to do with fate, faith and instinct, colonial
alienation and free will. I spoke of Frank Herbert as my new
prophet and his novel as my bible. Nature was my God. Silence,
my Holy Spirit. The winds of reality shifting the sands,
sculpting new landscapes, erasing my landmarks, I prayed to
avoid losing my way. Thanks to Frank, I came back alive. Back
from the erg, allow me to play the game of prophecy. Dune was
dreamed and made for the theatrical experience.
The big screen is not just another format, it is at the core of
the cinematographic language. The original form. The one that
will stand the test of time."
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