The human capital.
Is Italian cinema dead?
No, it is not! If it were dead, as Tarantino declared in an infamous interview in 2007, it is now revived and running for another Oscar with Paolo Virzì’s The human Capital. The movie spilt top honours at David di Donatello with Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty which won last year’s foreign-language Oscar.
Three different prospective, one chapter each, plus a final one and the story takes place around the question: how much is a person worth? I saw The human capital at the Raindance Film Festival in London and I loved it. Paolo Virzì’s last movie is far away from all his other films. In this last one, there is no trace of Livorno, his native city on the Ligurian sea. There is no trace of those Italian peculiar colours and warmth that permeate all his previous movies. The human capital is cold, it is meant to be cold. It is set in an imaginary town an imaginary town in Brianza, a region norther of Milan, alien to the director and that could actually be a suburban area of any town of a global world. It is possible to recognise Italy. I recognised the xenophobic behaviour of the regionalistic and federalist political party Lega Nord, but it is not Italy to be under the spotlight, as it is not an Italian problem that Virzì is showing. He is showing the bitterness of a moribund country. Italy maybe, or any other moribund place in the globe.
Money seem not to have barriers
There is no space for innocence and relationship are built on the superficial crust of interest. Everyone is guilty and nothing is as it appears. This is a noir story in which there are no heros, which is not a surprise in Virzi’s movie. What actually surprises is that there are not even heroines. Virzi’s beloved heroines simply are absent in this movie: no trace of the strong and feminine hero of “La prima cosa bella” (The first beautiful thing). Here we have Serena who seems to be neither aware of the coldness that surrounds her nor to be impressed by the money that moves around her. She learnt the lesson of cynicism and she doesn’t hesitate to lie but, differently from the other two female characters, she doesn’t lock herself in that prison of unhappiness from which they all seems to live their life. Serena choses her life and she lives it without calculation or profit. It is a “whodunnit movie” so it wouldn’t be fare to revel too much, but I strongly recommend to watch it and please do share your impressions. Dear Paolo Virzì good luck and we all keep our fingers crossed for the Oscar : the human capital deserve it and…
Grazie per la bella serata e il bel film.
