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Niccolò
Ammaniti
by
LindAnn Lo Schiavo
Apulia
Inspired an Award-Winning Novel -- and a New Film
Based on this Bestseller
.
Five
years ago, Niccolò Ammaniti was driving along the border between the
southern Italian regions of
Apulia
and
Basilicata
when he spotted a hilly landscape of rolling gold
farmland unlike any he had seen elsewhere in
Italy
. "What
do children do here in the summertime?" wondered the writer (born
in 1966), who was then 33 years old.
And if they got bored, what did they do to occupy their time?
Those questions helped concoct this bestseller that is set in
1978 during a torrid record-breaking summer when
Italy
saw an exponential growth in the number of
kidnappings -- 600 in all -- the same year that a law was passed that
froze the assets of kidnap victims’ families.
It was in 2001 when the Roman writer finally
put
Puglia
on paper, producing a three-page treatment for a
movie: "Io Non Ho Paura."
However, Ammaniti shelved his slim outline and returned to the
manuscript of what was supposed to be his third novel -- “Il
grossone” -- a robust ragout so full of juicy themes and
tantalizing characters that he could barely summarize it.
This ambitious project became an anchor, weighing him down and
curtailing movement. In
desperation, he realized that he owed his editor some chapters --
anything. That's when he
re-examined “Il
piccoletto” -- the three-page skeleton of "I'm Not Scared"
-- and fattened it up to 219 pages, plumping it up with fairly large
type.
Where
was this Pugliese outpost that abducted his imagination?
In reality, it is the area in northwest
Apulia
known as Le Murge, where the precincts of
Puglia
,
Campania
, and
Basilicata
meet. "Acqua
Traverse" is a fictional recreation of the tiny
village
of
Candela
. Ammaniti
fictionalized the landscape of this inland province, describing it as
harsh and isolated, the water supply scarce and the possibilities for
economic development fruitless. Midway
through the story, the narrator’s mother implores her young son
Michele Amitrano to leave Acqua Traverse when he grows up:
“You must go away from here and never come back.”
At
thirty-four, Ammaniti became the youngest ever winner of the prestigious
Viareggio-Repaci prize for "Io Non Ho Paura,"
which was also translated into twenty languages.
Italians flocked to the bookstores to get a copy and more kept
coming back. According to
Ammaniti's publisher Einaudi, there are now about 700,000 copies in
print, an amazing sales figure for a country of about 57 million people.
"The novel is already making the rounds of schools and young
children," said Paolo Repetti, a publishing executive at Einaudi.
According to him, some high school teachers here have used the
novel in classes. Some
Italian-language schools recommend it to foreign students of Italian at
an advanced level.
Additionally,
many foreign language versions have now been printed and Anchor Books
released an American edition in March 2004.
Despite the international fame of the book, the movie was shot on
a modest indie budget of $5 million in 12 weeks in Melfi [
Basilicata
]. The
author did the screenplay.
What
attracted Gabriele Salvatores, a 53-year-old director who has no
children, to a thriller told entirely from the viewpoint of a child?
“For
quite awhile, I’ve been on the look-out for filters that would allow
me to portray reality while distancing myself from comedy and realism.
My inspiration could be a videogame, an hallucinogen, a decayed
tooth," he replied mysteriously.
"This time around it was the point of view of a ten-year-old
who forces me to set up the film camera at a height of 1.30 meters.
That is a child’s perspective and that low angle is what we all
remember of our childhoods.”
Moreover, the story's bucolic setting allowed for vivid
illustrations of "the difference between what we see on the surface
and what this surface conceals."
Fans of the book will already know that this golden field of
grain hides a horrendous, dark hole. That is an intrinsically cinematic
contrast: the blinding blue sky that frames Michele's silhouette and the
wretched pit where the kidnapped child's identity blurs into the Dantean
dark. Since
the majority of Italian films will be distributed only within the
homeland, then what attracted Miramax to an Italian film? The centrality
of children to "I'm Not Scared" might explain why
Miramax Films picked it up for release in the
United States
.
"Foreign
movies with kids always appeal to American audiences," said Agnes
Mentre, the Miramax executive in charge of worldwide acquisitions.
"The dialogue among children travels easier.
It's much less local."
Another
reason might be that appealing gold-plated playmate -- an Oscar
statuette -- parked inside the office of filmmaker Gabriele Salvatores.
Twelve years ago he won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film
for "Mediterraneo."
A thin man of medium height who sports glasses, Salvatores
vaguely resembles a timid bank clerk -- until you catch a glimpse of his
left arm with its brazen snake tattoo. Perhaps this serpent is yet
another example of the difference between what is seen on the surface
and what this surface conceals.
The
Milanese film director Gabriele Salvatores and his producer Maurizio
Totti flew to New York City on April 1st for a press conference and
screening of their latest film "I'm Not Scared" [Io Non Ho
Paura] -- and their appearance received the customary respectful
clapping. However,
one journalist's question received an even heartier round of applause:
"Your movie depicts an entire village of the Southern
Italian adults as criminal, immoral, violent wretches, who abduct and
abuse children. Do we need MORE films that depict the Sicilians as
violent and unethical criminals?" Salvatores
flinched, as if to dodge the thorny question or flee from the sound: a
hundred-hands-worth of contrary Italian journalists. No, he did not see
the script in those terms. According
to the director, he approached Ammaniti's cinematic novel as a thriller,
a suspenseful narrative that could also portray the loss of innocence.
Defensively, he pointed out that the children, too, are neither
entirely good nor evil. Moreover, he followed the text faithfully, he
claimed, since the author himself penned the screenplay based on events
that occurred in meridione during the 1970s when over a hundred
children were abducted. "I
wanted to show that a beautiful golden wheat field can hide something
ugly," Salvatores said. "I
offered sharp contrasts: darkness and light, big and small. Visually,
this dualism is an invitation to look beneath the surface." His
intention, he argued, is "never to commercialize
Italy
in films," and that "not everything
onscreen should be a travelogue, an ad that white-washes our history."
Maurizio Totti, the former deejay who founded Colorado Films with
actor Diego Abatantuono and Gabriele Salvatores, added, with pride, that
a typical Hollywood blockbuster is often conceived as part of a sequel
relying on fantasy, like The Lord of the Rings, or as a series
like The Godfather -- whereas they set out to make an indie
depicting a small slice of reality.
An
eloquent Northern Italian reporter disagreed: "But this IS a series
-- one more dispiriting title about small town mafiosi. Ma
che fantasia! When have you ever visited a village where each and
every resident was morally bankrupt?"
Defending the low-life theme, Maurizio Totti (who was born near
Ravenna
in 1954) explained that they have made films
on other subjects, but failed to find foreign distributors. "In
fact, Italian films are almost always targeted solely to a national
market and that's why most have a limited budget," said the
producer. The Northern Italian critic refused to let that pass.
"La mafia, la
miseria, la poverta," he drawled, quite comically. "Cinema
is a powerful representation of a country, of society. Whoever is
cranking out these stereotypes has decided that an audience must only
want to see il mafioso, la miseria.
No wonder when visitors travel to
Sicily
, they're shocked to discover they have running
water. For heavens sake! Doesn't
Italy
have a different view of the world to share in movie
houses other than la mafia, la miseria, la poverta?"
It's
provoking that Salvatores did not choose to humanize at least one
supporting character with a mix of good and bad points, especially since
the screenplay does not blindly lock-step along with the book. The
novel's climax, for example, featuring pigs and a downpour that renders
clothing as dark as wine, is simpler on screen, where the night is dry
and swine-less. Why? "Making
rain," confessed Totti, "is expensive."
And whereas the novel shows 10-year-old Michele (Giuseppe
Cristiano) accidentally falling into the hole where Filippo
(Mattia Di Perro) is imprisoned, the film depicts Michele's discovery as
deliberate, thereby far more courageous.
Roman-born
actress Laura Caparrotti, who now lives in
Manhattan
and reviews for America Oggi, mentioned that
this reminded her of "an Italian version of Charles Laughton's
Night of the Hunter in many respects."
Shots of wildlife -- owls and toads, snakes and chickens -- evoke
Laughton's film, while ants crawling on eyes and animals killed by
automobiles suggest the intrusions of man-made things into the world of
nature. As a prologue, a
blissful panorama of a sun-kissed wheat field introduces the menacing
close-up of a squawking crow, a shot of buzzards circling overhead, and
Michele's encounter with a snake. Although
Michele bravely accepts a dare to traverse a rotting ceiling beam, the
viewer is not allowed to forget that dangerous acts invite consequences.
Taking a risk could recast the universe in unforeseen or sinister ways.
Though
the film manages its suspense well, jolting the audience a couple of
times in classic thriller style, the pace can drag occasionally. Filippo
is a disappointment, never permitted to be more than a symbol, not given
much to do besides raving about angels and behaving every inch the
wild-child. And despite a bravura performance by newcomer Giuseppe
Cristiano, the ending is a cheat: unsurprising and predictable.
Italo
Petriccione’s photography dwells on summer-soaked buildings and faces,
keeping the horizon high in the frame to duplicate the children’s
point of view, and shuttling back and forth between the view up from the
bottom of the kidnap victim’s pit-prison and the view down from the
rim. Et in Arcadia ego, wrote Virgil. In other words, don't enjoy
the unimpeachable beauties too much because death visits pretty places,
too. Humanity,
in all its inscrutable complexity, is also present in hamlets and a more
nuanced portrait of rural Italians would not have harmed the film’s
chances abroad.
IDEA
GIUGNO 2004
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