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When Roberto Saviano published his expose of the Neapolitan Camorra -- Italy's infamous mob organization -- the book became a global best-seller, earning the author innumerable literary prizes and a handful of death threats.
Saviano now lives in protective custody.
Gomorrah, a film based on Saviano's book, is finding massive box-office success wherever it plays. (Nobody is threatening the director, Matteo Garrone, and that may be the power of cinema.)
The film won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes last year, won five European Film Awards (including best film) and was nominated for a Golden Globe for best foreign language film.
Gomorrah was Italy's official submission for the Academy Awards.
It played in Toronto first during the film festival last fall.
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Gomorrah takes you inside a full-time life of crime as it's lived in the suburbs of Scampia and Secondigliano. It's an unvarnished look at the everyday existence of the Camorra, a mafia subset that dominates the region around Naples.
This is not the world of The Godfather. Gomorrah isn't glamorous, and plays more like a cross between documentary and war reporting. The movie opens with gangland slayings in close quarters, scenes that underline the fact that there's no escape for these guys -- as the enemy is both outside the fold, and in.
Gomorrah is organized around the fates of a handful of connected characters: A boy (Salvatore Abruzzese) who progresses from delivering groceries to running drugs; a master tailor (Salvatore Cantalupo) who sells his skills at copying couture to a factory full of Chinese workers, a mob money man (Gianfelice Imparato) who handles payments to loyal families and a pair of men involved in dumping toxic waste (Toni Servillo and Carmine Paternoster.)
Sometimes the characters do little more than chat or drink coffee together. Sometimes they shoot each other.
The film is a brew of crime, ambition, betrayal and blood, and it's chilling from top to bottom.
Much of Gomorrah is shot in Scampia, outside Naples, and in a huge, hideous public housing complex called Le Vele. The connected buildings are almost a separate character in the movie, shown here to be a modern concrete stronghold housing an entire community of criminal life.
In several parts of the movie, characters move around a landscape that could be the surface of the moon. Against this bleak backdrop, friends work together, turn on each other, move up a rung, advance their criminal status. The isolation of the characters and the influence of the Camorra in every aspect of their lives is brought home by the tailor's brief brush with another culture. Awe in his voice, he asks his wife, "Did you know the Chinese can cook?"
Gomorrah presents a glimpse inside a disturbing but simultaneously fascinating world.
In keeping with the film's minimalist sensibility, the performances are raw and intense, and you'll swear you know how every character smells -- even the three locals cast in the movie who are currently under investigation by police. Gomorrah is in Italian, with English subtitles.
(This film is rated 14-A)