Gomorra is the antidote to the American gangster film. It is a portrait of the gritty reality of the Camorra, shot in a style that owes more to war reporting than to Hollywood. This is not the Shakespearian power politics and internal turmoil of the Godfather. This is story telling from the bottom up, played out around the most rundown of Neapolitan estates. This is not about the generals, or even soldiers, this is about living in the war zone. It weaves together five stories to build up a picture of the sheer pervasiveness of the Camorra, its sheer depth and suffocating spread, and in doing so, its near invincibility.
Don Ciro is the middleman who distributes money to the families of prisoners. Had he been born elsewhere he would have been an accountant or an insurance salesman. Instead he takes having a gun shoved into his mouth with the same weary acceptance as a Jehovah’s Witness greeting a slamming door. His quiet routine of door-to-door payouts and chats over coffee is interrupted by the emergence of war, whole families fleeing the estate as sides are chosen and scores settled. It is a war no one at this level understands, but which is fought nonetheless. His switch of loyalties may be out of nothing but fear, but it leads to a bloodbath nonetheless.
Toto, a 13-year-old boy, starts out by rescuing a gun dropped during a police chase and ends up tricking the woman he’s run errands for years for to come out of her house to receive a bullet in the back of her head. His transition from child to blood stained mafioso is portrayed as unexceptional, perfectly normal.
Pasquale, the haute couture tailor, makes the mistake of taking money to teach his skills to a chinese competitor and has his car raked with bullets, only the intervention of his better connected boss saving him from a worse fate. As he watches Scarlet Johansson parade at a premier in one of his dresses we begin to see the true scale of the Camorra’s reach. From running the local drug trade to being one of the investors in the redevelopment of the World Trade Centre site in New York.
Roberto is a graduate sent off to work for the charismatic Franco, a wealthy businessman who travels the country winning lucrative contracts for industrial waste disposal. When Roberto walks away in disgust at his illegal dumping operation it is the one moment of hope in the film, but it is not a luxury others from less affluent backgrounds can afford. In the real world illegal dumping of toxic waste has had a disastrous effect on public health in the region.
It is Marco and Ciro that are the most memorable. Two cocky wannabe gangsters who spend their time acting out scenes from Scarface and dreaming of being the next Tony Montana. They want to make a name for themselves, carrying out petty stick-ups and refusing to bow down to the local Mr big. They are set up, gunned down and dumped without ceremony, the true mobsters annoyed at having to waste time on such kids. The glamorisation of their own world through Hollywood proving no match for reality.
This is not the high end of the Camorra, the buying and selling of politicians and judges, the multi millions made from skimming off public works. This is the selling coke from cars in housing estates and making sure the locals do as they are told. This is not suave wisecracking gangsters, it’s badly dressed fat men with guns. The police are nowhere in sight and never seem to enter anyone’s thoughts. There is only one power in town and nothing happens without its say so. This is the alternative state, all pervasive, suffocating.
The author of Gomorra is currently in hiding under 24-hour police protection amidst rumours that a death squad has been given orders to get the job done by Christmas. In the last thirty years the Camorra is said to have been responsible for some 4,000 deaths. By comparison, over the same period in Northern Ireland some 3,500 were killed by all sides. The Italian Government has recently dispatched 500 troops to the area to give comfort to the tourists, but no biblical style wrath will cleanse this Gomorrah.
