“No, “The Sun of the future” will not be his last film. Nanni Moretti has much more to say.” Fabio Benincasa teaches new media aesthetics at Naba, the New Academy of Fine Arts. His book “” will be released on 8 April by Bordeaux EdizioniNanni Seventies”, which celebrates Moretti’s years and tells, with a preface by Alberto Abruzzese (and unpublished anecdotes), the importance of his work in contemporary society. He explains to Open that the Roman director is important for his generation but also for Millennials. Who may have never seen a film by him from start to finish, but know him through memes on social media. Just the kind of thing, like Netflix, that he hates.
Morettiano
According to Benincasa Moretti it has become a screen onto which public opinion projects the strengths and weaknesses of our society. «He has always been a political presence: young, coming from left-wing activism, a protester against the Italian comedy establishment. His “You deserve it Alberto Sordi” had already caused a rift. And in the dialogue with Monicelli in Arbasino’s broadcast he said he didn’t feel part of that world, splitting the cultural world into two parts.” The girotondi then provoke a further division «and here anti-Morettians are born even among those who had never been interested in his cinema. His cinema becomes the stuff of Roman and left-wing “radical chic”, as happened with his first films, after all.”
Moretti is made to divide, says Benincasa. Because it was formed in a season in which the characters split public opinion. And here the category of anti-Morettians was born: «There is Monicelli, there is Dino Risi who considered him arrogant. On the other hand they wanted to co-opt him, he didn’t want to be there. The clash was inevitable.”
The roundabouts
However, the girotondi were a very short season. They began with the speech in Piazza Navona (“With these leaders we will never win”) and culminated with the demonstration in front of the Supreme Court in 2002. A flash in the pan? Benincasa says that Moretti has never stood for election and the criticism of an artist «is fine. Yet it testified to an intolerance towards the left-wing political class which today has become a leitmotif.” Another analytical category in Benincasa’s book is morettism, defined as a somewhat snobbish moral attitude that unites the director and his target audience. «In my opinion it is one straw man argument which is produced to pillorie the Morettians. On the other hand, in Italy now periodically some accuse others of being radical chic, unless they are ultra-right or write about Sheet or The truth. Or I’m General Vannacci. But don’t write this otherwise they’ll sue me.”
Divisive
Moretti began to be divisive straight away, explains Benincasa. «He was too successful as a young man and no one is forgiven for this in Italy. Then his theatrical and movementist attitudes were also provocative (we are in the years of Carmelo Bene and Andrea Pazienza) and for this reason they ended up on the media agenda. Then he always found a way to be divisive even afterwards, without being embalmed like a Venerated Master. The fact that they wrote “Viva Stalin” under the Sacher after the release of the last film seemed particularly brilliant to me.”
In “Il Sol dell’avvenire” Moretti then returns to being a critic of contemporary society. And he chooses a big target: Netflix. «The main criticism is that the streaming company imposes a homogenizing structure on cinema. Netflix now has the same role as the majors in the Thirties or Forties. A director like him rejects it as a matter of speech. Someone like him rejects this speech.” Yet Martin Scorsese made a film with Netflix: «But he also released it in theaters. And when people protested about the four-hour duration, he replied that there are those who binge watch six episodes of a series on Netflix: “You really don’t want to see a film made by me?”.
Social media and Pasolini
According to Benincasa, however, Nanni Moretti has an account on Netflix. Facebook and Twitter, however, no «because in my opinion you don’t want to waste time with this stuff. And then Moretti is a director-author, he wants to capture her attention, she doesn’t tolerate anyone else stealing it from her.” The Instagram account in her name instead “exists, but I don’t know if he or someone else is behind it. The clips from the last film were very funny, but I think there is a social media manager behind it but not him himself.” In the book a comparison is often made with Pasolini, who however «is the model of the generations of the Fifties and Sixties, which continues to manifest itself even now. In “Caro Diario” Moretti visits the site of Pasolini’s murder with Keith Jarreth’s “Koln Concert” in the background. Certainly up until “Il Caimano” we expected him to take clear positions on the left and on Berlusconism. Then he became more elusive. But his films have always remained political.”
The sun of the future
Will “The Sun of the Future” be Nanni Moretti’s last film? It makes you think so when you see that final tracking shot which almost seems to be a prelude to “That’s all folks”. But Benincasa says convincingly no: «First of all because the directors’ testament films are rarely the last. He thinks of Ingmar Bergman and “The Strawberry Place”, for example. As well as “8 and 1/2” for Fellini. Directors and writers make works when they feel like it, not when they are about to die or stop working. More than anything, the film demonstrates that it is not true that Moretti always makes the same film. He is always capable of surprising us, from Berlusconi to the Pope. After “Three Floors” everything was considered finished, and he comes up with a blockbuster. It won’t be his last film. What will it be? Only he knows.”
Promising young woman, usual asshole, venerated master
And we come to Alberto Arbasino’s aphorism about the Italian intellectual who goes through three phases: promising young man, usual asshole, venerated master. One wonders whose revered maestro Moretti is today: «Certainly from his generation. But also mine: we met him watching his films on TV and when he was “a splendid forty year old”. When I saw “Caro Diario” I decided to go and live in Garbatella. Then there are those who met him during the girotondi period. But it must also be said that given the dematerialisation of media, today even those who see the gags on Youtube or share the memes that circulate on the Internet are a student of Nanni Moretti. There are twenty-year-olds who say “Words are important” or “I do things, I see people”. They’re Generation Z, but they know a 70-year-old director. Maybe they haven’t seen the film, but Moretti is now vox populi.”
Millennials and Generation Z
They repeat Morettian phrases without knowing that they come from a film. «Two things testify to the cultural influence on contemporary society: becoming an adjective and transforming into a disembodied voice that perhaps ends up on t-shirts. Moretti has become both. Like Ennio Flaiano: many have never read a book by him but know phrases like “Italians always rush to the aid of the winner”. Another theme of “Nanni Settanta” is Moretti’s Rome. It is the city of inspiration for him but in a different way than Fellini: no Trevi Fountain but a tangential look at lesser-known neighborhoods such as Monteverde or those that have become proverbial such as Spinaceto with an adjoining screenplay on the escape from the neighborhood.
It is the gaze «of someone who was born in Rome, who did not arrive there like Fellini. All of us who arrived from outside had a strong impact with the magnificence of the Center and the Great Beauty: even Sorrentino has a Fellini-like gaze. Moretti, on the other hand, was born there and lives there like any other city. In “Caro Diario” he also goes to Casal Palocco, Prati and Monteverde are often seen. It is a very Rome, with its pastry shops, its newsstands, its parks, its walls. It is a centrifugal and tangential vision.”
Has Moretti tired?
Finally, Benincasa doesn’t think that after “The Sun of the Future” Moretti no longer has much to say. «First of all I’m a superfan and I will never get tired of him. And then the box office numbers say that the public hasn’t gotten tired of him, on the contrary.”
«It must also be said that he hasn’t even made very many films, just 14 without counting shorts and documentaries. Considering that he started at 24 and is now 70, he is still at the beginning of his career. And he will give us a lot of satisfaction. Or at least, as a fan, I really hope so.”
Read also:
