Open Roads ’24: A Brighter Tomorrow

The Italian Communist Party (PCI) received direct financial support from the Soviet Union, so obviously they had no independence whatsoever. They refused to condemn the terrorism of the Red Army Faction and parroted Party propaganda demonizing democracy advocates during the Hungarian Revolution and the Czechoslovakian invasion. Inevitably, many prominent members broke from the Party in ’56 and ’68, but the PCI stayed loyal to its Soviet masters as an institution. The PCI’s massive hypocrisy is ripe for savage mockery, but that is absolutely not happening in Nanni Moretti’s A Brighter Tomorrow, which screens during this year’s Open Roads: New Italian Cinema.

As usual, Moretti plays a filmmaker not so different from himself. Giovanni yearns to make an Italian adaption of John Cheever’s “The Swimmer,” but his current film is a story of a neighborhood PCI club, who are hosting a Hungarian circus troupe, right as the Soviet tanks roll into Hungary.

Giovanni conceived his film as a musical, vaguely in an Umbrellas of Cherbourg bag, using sentimental old Italian pop songs. He wants to evoke nostalgia for the glory days of PCI clubs, so Giovanni needs to somewhat whitewash the PCI’s history. As director of A Brighter Tomorrow, the real-life Moretti is clearly trying to rehabilitate the real-life PCI. Consequently, the film runs interference for Italian Communists on multiple meta-levels.

When not excusing away an oppressive ideology, A Brighter Tomorrow engages in self-indulgently neurotic rom-com humor. This film should inspire fresh new respect for Woody Allen, because his angsty, nebbish, classic movie-loving, frustrated artist shtick is obviously harder than it looks.

A Brighter Tomorrow had tremendous potential for satire, but Moretti openly engages in wish-fulfillment, creating a PCI rebellion against CCP orthodoxy that literally never happened. You have to wonder what the legendary Polish actor Jerzy Stuhr (who worked extensively with Krzysztof Kieslowski and Andrzej Wajda) really and truly thinks of Moretti’s final cut. In this film, Stuhr plays the Polish ambassador, who happens to be the much older boyfriend of Giovanni’s college student daughter Emma, so keep those Woody Allen comparisons coming.

Kieslowski’s Dekalog—All Ten, Digitally Restored

It predates Netflix binging, appointment television, and “TV too good for TV.” Arguably, the nearest precedent for Krzysztof Kieslowski’s ten-part mini-series broadly inspired by the Ten Commandments would be Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s epic Berlin Alexanderplatz—auteur filmmaking applied to the television serial format—but the thematic and narrative similarities are few and far between. Using the residents of a grim Panelak-style Communist housing complex, Kieslwoski and co-screenwriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz pose many thorny moral questions, but offer few answers in the digitally restored Dekalog (trailer here), which screens theatrically in two-hour, two-episode installments, starting this Friday in New York.

Do not try to apply one-to-one symmetry between the Commandments and the Dekalogs. Neither were written for the sake of such comparisons. You could argue the Commandments are all present in each Dekalog, but some are always more pronounced. Nobody understood better than Piesiewicz the damage Communism inflicted on the Polish soul, but neither free-thinking Krzysztof was really interested in making political statements by the late 1980s. Instead, Dekalog is an examination of the national conscience. Yet, it is hard to overlook the rationing and Spartan living standards produced by Socialism.

Although the computer technology depicted in Dekalog: One now looks prehistoric, it is arguably as timely today as it was in 1988. Widely thought to directly address the First Commandments (no false gods), a professor who venerates science employs mathematical formulas and computer models to determine when the lake will be sufficiently frozen for his son to use his new ice-skates. Like many Dekalogs, it is a tragedy. While it is unusually explicit in its religious symbolism, Dekalog: One establishes the dark look and ambiguous tone that hold relatively consistent throughout the series/film. It also introduces Artur Barciś playing an unnamed watcher-bystander, who briefly appears in seven more Dekalogs (he was also supposed to have a walk-on in Dekalog: Seven, but production snafus conspired against it).

All Dekalogs are created equal, but Dekalog: Two is more equal than others. For one thing, it will be referenced in detail several times during Dekalog: Eight. It is also distinguished by the presence of Krystyna Janda (arguably the most important screen actor of the late 1970s and early 1980s, known for Wajda masterworks, like Man of Marble, Man of Iron, and Without Anesthesia) as Dorota Geller, an orchestra musician with a dilemma. She is still devoted to her comatose husband, but she is pregnant with another man’s baby. As fate dictates, the chief attending physician is also a resident of the complex. She will repeatedly press the doctor for a hard and fast prognosis, so she can determine whether she can keep the baby or have an abortion for her husband’s sake. Critics try to force Dekalog: Two into the Second Commandment, regarding taking the Lord’s name in vain, you can find plenty to apply to the Commandments prohibiting adultery and murder.

Dekalog: Three might be the most self-contained, chronicling a family man’s chaotic Christmas Eve, as a former married lover drags him across the city, ostensibly in search of her suicidal husband. Arguably, it represents Kieslowski’s only traditional car chase, yet it is still completely in keeping with the rest of the Dekalog. Believe it or not, this is thought to relate to Sabbath-keeping, but again, the adultery Commandment seems more apt—not that it really matters.

In contrast, Dekalog: Four is probably as edgy as the series gets, focusing on a father-daughter relationship that inevitably takes on provocative overtones when she discovers he is not her biological parent. Similarly, Dekalog: Five is easily the most violent installment, revolving around the senseless impulse-murder of a cab driver. Kielsowski and Pieslowski would return to its heavy themes of crime, punishment, and remorse, expanding the story into the full feature, A Short Film About Killing.

Dekalog: Six was similarly expanded into A Short Film About Love. It could well be the most divisive Dekalog, but reaction to the tale of a woman who turns the tables on her Peeping Tom more severely than she intended should not simply cleave along gender lines. Be that as it may, as the alluring, somewhat older Magda and the socially stunted Tomek, Grazyna Szapolowska and Olaf Lubaszenko give two of Dekalog’s most indelible performances.

Dekalog: Seven might be the weakest link, not merely due to Barciś’s absence, but also as a result of some problematic motivations. The clearly unstable Majka has kidnapped her young sister, Ania, who is really the daughter she was forced to relinquish to her disdainful mother to avoid the stigma of scandal. She now intends to reclaim her maternal role in Canada, but of course it will not be so simple.

Fittingly, Dekalog: Eight ranks alongside Dekalog: Two as series high points. Dorota Geller’s story is duly related in the ethics class of Zofia, a spry philosophy professor and a widely respected veteran of the Polish Resistance. Elżbieta, a visiting American academic is also sitting in today. Unbeknownst to Zofia, her guest is a Holocaust survivor, whom she once encountered under very complicated circumstances.

Ironically, the narrative of Dekalog: Nine feels familiar, but it is actually a tangential supporting character that inspired yet another film (in this case, the flat-out masterpiece, The Double Life of Veronique). Granted, this tale of a man freshly diagnosed with impotency who becomes obsessively jealous of his attractive wife has its analogs, but the execution is remarkably powerful.

Happily, Dekalog: Ten maintains the project’s high standards. Appropriately, it also calls back to Dekalog: Eight. Kieslowski regular Jerzy Stuhr (The Scar, Camera Buff, Blind Chance) and Zbigniew Zamachowski play the staid middle aged and younger punk rocker sons of a recently deceased absentee father. In addition to his debts, they also inherit a shockingly valuable stamp collection. Inevitably, this leads to paranoia, which might not be so unfounded.

Familiar faces will reappear, but unlike subsequent braided narratives, Kieslwoski and Piesiewicz are not obsessively concerned with the interrelatedness of their major and minor characters. Still, there is an awful lot to observe and absorb in Dekalog. In all honesty, it represents quite a challenge for programmers. It is too heavy to binge-watch. Indeed, each Dekalog really demands time to decompress. Yet, all ten should ideally be seen in close succession. The IFC strategy of screening two-Dekalog blocks over five weeks is probably as good as any and better than most. Regardless, it is a towering achievement and a deeply challenging moral and aesthetic statement. Very highly recommended, Kieslowski’s Dekalog commences this Friday (9/2) in New York, at the IFC Center.

Nanni Moretti’s We Have a Pope

Popes are infallible, but cardinals are not. Nevertheless, cardinals elect popes to be infallible, at least when speaking Ex cathedra. Nanni Moretti addresses that contradiction, though not exactly in those term. Yet, for all his materialist bluster, Moretti (like any good Italian) maintains a sense of awe for the church and its rituals in his latest film, We Have a Pope (Habemus Papam), which opens this Friday in New York at the IFC Center (trailer here).

We do not really know what happens during a conclave to elect a new pope, but Moretti imagines it to be something not unlike the vanishing American caucus system. After a number of straw polls, a dark horse candidate emerges, defeating all the presumptive favorites. Frankly, everyone is quite relieved, except the French Cardinal Melville.

Rather stunned at first, the Pope-elect becomes increasingly agitated as the magnitude of his new position sinks in. Paralyzed with self-doubt, he refuses to address the faithful from the balcony, which is quite puzzling to them, given the white smoke wafting in the air. Thus begins a concerted campaign to coax the new Pope to assume his mantle. Until he does, the conclave is technically still on.

Enter Moretti himself as a psychiatrist recruited to quell the Pope’s anxieties. Unfortunately, he is not a believer, which ought to make things rather awkward. However, he fits in rather well with the cardinals, but he does not make much progress with the Pontiff.

Habemus is about one hundred times more sympathetic to the Church than one would expect from the central conflict. Moretti depicts the ceremonies and sacraments with a respect approaching reverence. However, portraying Cardinal Melville as a failed actor is clearly a mistake, because it automatically brings to mind Karol Wojtyła, who performed in many underground stage productions before eventually becoming Pope John Paul II, one of the Twentieth Century’s most vigorous (and successful) advocates for human freedom and dignity.

Frankly, it is difficult to buy into the premise of a cardinal of considerable years and standing reluctant to heed such a call to service. However, two of the gentleman giants of European cinema have the presence and authority to sell-it, or least suspend disbelief. Deftly avoiding theatrics, Michel Piccoli sets the perfect melancholy tone as the new Pope, while Jerzy Stuhr (so memorable from the classic films of Krzysztof Kieslowski) gives the film some worldly heft as the harried Papal spokesman (hmm, wonder which Pope brought him on board).

Despite the implications of its third act, Habemus takes more shots at the vacuous media and the dogmas of psychiatry than the Catholic Church Moretti left. Surprisingly gentle in its humor, We Have a Pope is a good film for audiences who can buy into the unprecedented crisis of faith when it opens tomorrow (4/6) in New York at the IFC Center.