By Luisa Terzulli
On the occasion of the presentation of the filmThe Caiman at The Times BFI London Film Festival, the director Nanni Moretti (N) appeared in the cinema to answer the questions of the surprised public (P) present. Here is a report of the interview, to which also GIORGIOSTUDIO contributed…
P: Mr Moretti, did you invite Silvio Berlusconi or Tony Blair to the presentation of your film?
N: No.
P: The film has a pessimistic ending. Is this also your point of view about Italian culture?
N: In this film I have not paid much attention to the folkloristic, unintentionally ‘comical’ aspect of Berlusconi, but to the dramatic side of his character. I have focused on the ‘threatening’ aspect for Italian politics, and in the ending, too, I have concentrated on this side of the character.
P: Are there hopes for Italy? (Everybody laughs)
N: Actually, this is not a very funny question! In the ending of the film appear flames and rubble which are symbolical: they represent constitutional, moral, psychological debris with which we will have to come to terms for years. We Italians were used so much to the words of Berlusconi to not perceive their ‘dangerousness’. In the film Berlusconi is played by me exactly because I am distant from him, in order to restore his dangerousness, indeed.
GIORGIOSTUDIO: How difficult is it to combine making art with a message to communicate?
N: Art is a big word… I have always made films when I have felt the urge of telling stories. As a spectator, instead, I have nothing against commercial films if well written and well played. Personally, I have had the luck and the privilege of always making my films the way I wanted to, and in 30 years of career this is my first film in which I do not appear as the main character. Indeed, I have made him pay for it to the actor who played the main role! (Laughter from the audience)
P: By watching the situation from faraway, from the outside, do we not have the feeling that Berlusconi perhaps is an effect of the Italian society rather than a person who has exerted such influence? As if the Italian society was actually ‘ready’ for Berlusconi, and Berlusconi has simply arrived?
N: Berlusconi has found fertile soil.
P: Do you think that the film had some influence on the result of the latest government elections in Italy?
N: I do not make films in order to change the mind of the spectator: politics and cinematographic time requirements are very different. But if I have succeeded I am not sorry! The character of Teresa is a sort of my alter ego: she wants to make the film for the others whilst I want to make it for myself. For Teresa the film is useful, for me cinema is a means, a tool that would have been wasted if it had not narrated these latest 12-13 years of change. The scene of the smugglers, to give an example, is real and is on the records of a trial. Teresa thinks to shake up the Italian spectators; Moretti, instead, wants to remind these things to himself.
And it is here that our Nanni Moretti was forced to leave the stage, urged by logistic needs. Not without complaining first that, after flying purposely to London from Rome and having missed his usual tennis match, he would have expected at least a debate lasting until the dead of night…
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