Title: The Inner Cage (Ariaferma)
Director: Leonardo Di Costanzo
Language: Italian
Running time: 117’
The topic of isolation in confined spaces is incredibly contemporary nowadays, with the whole Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. A new situation for most of us, but nothing out of the ordinary for prison inmates, a category that is often disregarded, and somehow forgotten by many, but that deserves to be treated as humans nonetheless.
This is the story that Di Costanzo’s The Inner Cage (Ariaferma) wants to tell. Because of some bureaucratic hold up, the Mortana prison isn’t able to shut its gates completely. In fact, twelve prisoners cannot be transferred to new locations, and a handful of guards are forced to stay and keep watch over them. The prisoners aren’t happy with the situation, and try to gain some more liberties. At first, they protest because of the bad quality of the food, led by inmate Lagioia (Silvio Orlando), who takes on the role of their leader but who is also regarded as the most dangerous among the prisoners. Lagioia manages to convince the very humane and grounded captain of the correctional officers Gaetano (Toni Servillo) to let him cook the meals from now on. The prisoners and guards come together in taking care of Fantaccini (Pietro Giuliano), a young boy whose not major crime has actually turned into something rather serious. Finally, they all come together in a beautiful dinner scene: the power has been cut out because of a storm, and in order to be able to see while eating, the guards and the inmates eat their meal together in the inner courtyard between the cells.
Nothing major really happens in The Inner Cage, but the what really develops are the characters. Many of the guards treat the inmates as just the crime they have committed, rather than realising that what stands behind those bars are actual people, often with a life of struggles. The movie is mainly shot using a telephoto lens, in order to emphasise the nuances of the actors’ expressions and gestures. What the director wants to show us is the other side both of the inmates and of the guards: they are all humans with a soul. This is especially captured in Gaetano’s character, where Toni Servillo shows with simple expressions the human side of it all, with comforting and warm looks directed towards the inmates and their situation.
It’s impossible not to catch the real aim of the movie. Nothing really seems to happen, however it’s quite impossible to get distracted from the scenes. Di Costanzo’s character work does an amazing job at depicting these two forgotten categories, especially that of the prisoners. The director is really more interested in how penal institutions take a toll on its residents, rather than giving the spectators a thriller or action plot like one would expect when thinking about a prison movie. The aim here is really to tell us what goes on inside these people’s minds, as they constricted into spaces where there isn’t much to do, awaiting for a transfer that seems unlikely to ever come. It all piles up to make a compassionate movie about a portion of people often forgotten by society, people who are really something more than just the crime they committed. As Di Costanzo himself said, “The Inner Cage is not a film on the conditions in Italian prisons. It is perhaps a film on the absurdity of imprisonment.”
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