It would seem that he has just begun and that he still has an entire filmography to complete. Marco Bellocchio, the director almost 60 years ago Hands in pocketspremieres this week The rapture and he does it barely a year apart from what was his debut in a television series, Exterior night (Filmin). The latter was a desolate fresco lasting 300 minutes that took charge of what happened in Italy between March 16 and May 9, 1978. It was then when the president of the Christian Democrats, Aldo Moro, was kidnapped by the terrorist group Red Brigades. On the Via Fani in Rome, and after murdering his five bodyguards, he was captured and subsequently murdered. His body would be abandoned in an image that went around the world in the trunk of a red Renault 4 in the center of Rome. His death ended what was going to be the greatest political experiment, let’s call it that, that he could have experienced in Europe divided into two blocks.
«It is a bit useless to consider alternative futures. What is clear is that each action conditions the following. And yes, I believe I can affirm that that tragedy not only anticipated the crisis of the political parties that emerged after the Second World War in Italy, it also It was the beginning of the discredit that the very concept of politics is experiencing our days,” he says as soon as he is reminded of his work from two years ago. “But let’s talk about now,” she corrects.
Now he returns to deal with the same crime, a kidnapping, although with the victim, the time, the consequences, the development and the completely different outcome. Or not so much. The true story of the mid-19th century is told when the Catholic Church decided to kidnap (it would do so legally) and separate a Jewish child from his family because a maid decided to secretly baptize him. According to dogma, once the sacrament is completed, there is no turning back. The rapture, To situate ourselves, it is from start to finish a monument carved in marble. The dark photography, the dark story and the rigor of what is narrated, tremendous, leave few options for doubt. At 84 years old, maestro Marco Bellocchio shows that it is always a good time to debut. He doesn’t care about age, career and time. “Projects are done when they come out, when there is money,” he comments to explain so much activity.
It could be said that kidnapping – as a crime, as an attitude and even as a metaphor – has always obsessed the director. We must not forget that Good morning, evening, of 2003, insisted on the Moro case. «They are two completely different events. On the one hand, he is a great politician with a political intention and, on the other, a very particular case in which an innocent child was the victim. However, it is true that in both cases there is a religious provision. The Catholic Church and the terrorism of the Red Brigades share the same fanaticism of absolute principles. Even the murder itself is carried out in one case and another in the name of an irrefutable idea, of a god. The same unreasoned certainty of faith and dogma that says that if one is baptized he is necessarily a Christian is the certainty of the revolution for the sake of a perfect and better world. You don’t kill or kidnap a person, you kill or kidnap an idea. The mechanism is the same,” he reasons.
The film, presented at the last edition of the Cannes Festival, reconstructs with overwhelming fidelity a Rome that no longer exists. And from there he traces the exact and tragic journey of a fight due to irrational force between the child who does not understand why he is separated from his mother and the child who only wants to survive. The first is Jewish and the second has no choice but to accept the power of the Church. «In reality, and although I can be considered passionate against Catholicism, The problem is not particular to the Christian creed. Any religion, be it Roman, Muslim or Orthodox, has an absolute and blind dimension. Religion, any of them, is by definition intolerant,” he reflects, takes a second and continues: “Yes, it is true that the new pope seems very tolerant and charitable. And I’m not saying that he, in the private sphere, can’t be. No matter how close he is to immigrants, to those who are different, to homosexuals or to the divorced, ultimately what matters, what is immovable, is the dogma. And the dogma of the 19th century that allowed a kidnapping is the same as today. A tolerant pope like the current one is a contradiction; “the Pope owes himself to the absolute, and intolerant, principles of the Church,” he concludes.