The documentary, which was inserted into the Berlinale Special section at the 73rd Berlin Film Festival and had its world premiere two days after Troisi’s 70th birthday, is an epic and intimate journey signed by an author who is having a particularly inspiring and productive time lived through
The desired gesture, perhaps due, certainly passionate. someone down there loves me From Mario Martine dedicated Massimo Troisi “He’s the heir to the film that we would have loved to do together and unfortunately couldn’t.” Therefore, it is not just a letter of love, gratitude and appreciation, it is an exquisite cinematic gem. In fact, “I wanted to approach Troisi as if he were a fifteenth-century painter, a blank slate, starting from his works, from his films,” explains Martone. So a meta-artistic work that pierces two gazes within a common cultural affiliation, but also on an idea of cinema that is synonymous with a worldview, a “life form” and thus in synthesis , it is a deeply “Troisian” film, albeit authentically marked by Martone’s handwriting.
Posted in section Berlinale Special at the 73rd Berlin Film Festival and premiered two days after Troisi’s 70th birthday, The documentary is an epic and intimate journey signed by an author experiencing a particularly inspired and productive period, and begins with an idea of opposition between the “in field” and the “off field”, something very coherent and essential in both Troisi and Marton cinema. Starting with the director of Nostalgia’s decision to direct alongside its publisher Jacopo Quadri while post-production of Somebody Loves Me Over There is working: a selection revealing the “cinema in progress”, the mechanism that supports the creative idea to enter the late colleague’s creative codes with more relevance. How the artist/filmmaker Troisi thought, how he was inspired, how he related to the world, his city, politics, women and the love that for him was “a despair, a condemnation” and finally with the Death . And even if in the field the words of the great Massimo are preserved on loose leaflets, in his diary, as well as the taped confessions – a priceless legacy preserved by former partner and lifelong co-author Anna Pavignano, creator and co becomes -author of the documentary often and often on stage – but off the screen the great contemporary actors remain called upon to read/recite these writings/thoughts. Out of Tony Servilo, Silvio Orlando and several other voices are heard, humble in the service of a Master loved and cherished by all without distinction.
Massimo Troisi, portrayed by Mario Martone, contains several traces of a very rich mapping that highlights how much the artist and the man played in unison, as opposed to a fragility that became strength and a strength that knew its own fragility . And not coincidentally, in an existential and “anarchic” poetics very close to the Nouvelle Vague that Martone has rightly placed in parallel, especially with the “fleeting” characters of Truffaut. Because “Massimo was a rebel, he had a political instinct that he has always remained true to. He was the son of the Neapolitan 70s, no wonder. He theorized a character who should never bow or succumb to conformism. He did not tell love itself, but what appears and disappears. Despite his popularity, his resistance to outside influences remained steadfast, and that too is Nouvelle Vague, something he was aware of.”
There is a lot about Troisi in the film, but there isn’t everything, there doesn’t have to be everything, because he himself hated “omniscience”: “I don’t believe so much in those who always know everything, everything,” he said. And the “obvious” Lello Arena and Enzo Decaro are not meant to commemorate him, who died young and sublime poet, but authors who explain his profound legacy, and this because “I didn’t want Massimo’s friends to talk about him in the many valuable documentaries that already existed for me, but who could watch like me”. So here are the testimonials from Franz Klein as a writer and screenwriter, Paolo Sorrentino as director, Ficarra & Picone as a comedian, Michael Rardford And Roberto Perpignani as director and editor of Il postino, (“which I consider Troisi’s last film as author”) and finally the equally late one Joseph Bertolucci to whom we owe the writing of We just have to cry in 1984 and an interview with critics Gottfried Fofi And Federico Chiaccieri, to whom we owe the first monograph dedicated to Troisi. But alongside numerous (and often some of the funniest) clips from Troisi’s world of theatre, cinema and television included in the documentary are the scenes of rare intimacy shot in the studio “on the open sea” by Anna Pavignano, a woman and writer who radiates serenity Through a natural and authentic beauty, qualities that are understood correspond to what Troisi loved, also because they partially complement him.
Anna, who is from Turin, not Naples, and who, perhaps because of this “distant” cultural and linguistic origin, helped Massimo to write universal texts, abstracting them from the Neapolitan DNA and emphasizing how much the artist from San Giorgio a Cremano his undeniably loved origins, but felt no need for territorial and sentimental exclusivity. Finally, Naples radiated from his gestures, from his “non-words” and from the symbiosis and twin friendship with the other icon from Campania Pine Daniel who was his musical pillar and brother with a fragile heart. How not to move when you see them framed back together while Pino Quando composes for the soundtrack of I thought it was love… instead it was a buggy. “Together Massimo and Pino captured the deep spice of those years, also of the protest of the time, against the Neapolitan background”. Somebody Over Loves Me, produced by an Indiana Production, Vision Distribution and Medusa Film Production in association with Sky, will be released on February 19th (Troisi’s birthday) in 200 copies, with a doubling to 400 from February 23rd.