July 10, 2003

• Another up-all-night. I'm sitting here with the morning sunlight drifting in my window like a breeze.
  
  I watched this movie, one that the landlord had left behind. It's called 'Umberto D.,' and it's by the same director who made 'The Bicycle Thief.'
  
  It's about how hard it is to be old. The setting is post-WWII Italy, a hard time indeed, even if you're not old.
  
  Apparently, this movie is part of a movement in Italian cinema, called 'neorealism;' the camera spends a lot of time watching people do things like make coffee, have awkward moments, and go to bed. At the same time that they're realistic, however, the characters are all allegorical, which might explain the 'neo' part. The old man's struggles represent the desire to continue living. His dog, to which he is very loyal, represents the enjoyment of life. His landlord, sometimes running a brothel, sometimes entertaining high-society guests, represents (of all things) the universal impending mortality. The maid is Italy struggling with the after-effects of war. And so forth.
  
  It's well-written, well-acted, the direction is top-notch, and the cinematography is far above most anything going on in the US at the time. Too bad I didn't like the then-fashionable open ending, wherein the compelling realism aspect is jettisoned in order to end the movie with a question mark. (The old man doesn't kill himself and the dog by walking in front of a train, because the dog freaks out and runs away. The old man follows the dog, who is now afraid of him. Eventually he charms the dog back into trusting him by throwing a pine cone as if it were a ball. Man and dog play happily in the park, no care that he has no place to live.)
  
  What I disliked most about this movie is that it takes at face value the realities of living in a city like Rome. That is, it offers no critique of social norms, even as it critiques government policies such as reducing pensions to the elderly. It presents people as weak and unable to live up to an Italian social norm, never condemning the system.
  
  Of course, since social norms act as stand-ins for the inevitability of mortality, that's a difficult critique to make. Which is why it frustrated me.

  • 10:20 am
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