Dir.
Marcello Bellocchio, 2003, Italy, 106 mins
Cast:
Maya Sansa, Roberto Herlitzka
These days documentary films are successfully finding audiences, and coming to grips with political issues around the globe. For conventional or simplified versions of events, Hollywood can usually be relied on. Good Morning, Night is a different concoction all together. Marcello Bellocchio's film takes a genuine event, splicing in some real footage, and using this as a departure point to explore different themes.
It's Rome in 1978. A young woman called Chiara (Sansa) moves into a mundane looking new apartment block with her boyfriend. She goes to a non-descript librarian job, and arranges washing on her porch like anyone else. Yet she conceals quite a secret: she and her partner are members of The Red Brigade, a then notorious, extremist, left-wing terrorist organisation. Her group plan and organise an extraordinary act, well documented in Italian history. They kidnap and eventually murder Prime Minister Aldo Moro (Roberto Herlitzka). Chiara's flat is where they imprison him.
Very early on the film establishes a connection between the convincing performances of the leads in this fictional re-imagining and cleverly edited documentary footage. So Chiara and her accomplices are preparing their flat for the arrival of the kidnapped Moro, she gazes nervously into the sky, and the reverse shot is actual news footage of an army helicopter scouting the area. Likewise, many contemporary figures appear in television footage appropriately weaved-in to the story. The narrative is retold mostly through her eyes, allowing the viewer to understand her trepidation and her feelings when the Prime Minister is brought, hooded, into her flat. She prepares food for him, and sits nervously with her fellow terrorists on the couch watching their actions unfold in a TV news story. Naturally the pressure builds on Chiara, and her group, as the government is plunged into crisis, and the country speculates on the fate of its Prime Minister.
What writer/director Marco Bellocchio does so effectively is to deal with the politics and context of these events, and combine that with the sensitive and moving portrayal of the characters at close quarters through pure speculation. After exposure to public opinion as she goes about her everyday chores, and moments with the prisoner, Chiara gradually starts to question her cause. The film very cleverly uses her dreams to illuminate possible motives and to try and understand the terrorists. There is a mixture of fantasy and realism in the editing which gives a sense of dark whimsy, underlined by the effective score. The acting is uniformly good throughout, from Maya Sansa to Roberto Herlitzka's moving portrayal of the doomed prisoner.
Good morning, Night is an unusual film, which is intelligent, provocative and worthy of discovery.
Johnny Messias
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