Title: The Hand of God (È stata la mano di Dio)
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Language: Italian
Running time: 130'
Poetry has always been a part of cinema, and where can we find more poetry than in someone’s own memories? In this short account of his adolescent life, Paolo Sorrentino dishes out in front of us the poetry of beautiful mundane Naples family life.
The Hand of God (È stata la mano di Dio) is a short biography of Sorrentino’s life in the 80s. His screen alter-ego is Fabietto Schisa (Filippo Scotti), a 16-year-old with no friends, who can only think about beautiful naked aunt Patrizia (Luisa Ranieri) and Maradona’s possible acquisition by his favorite soccer team, SSC Napoli. He lives in Naples with his parents, dad Saverio (Toni Servillo) and mom Maria (Teresa Saponangelo), his brother Marchino (Marlon Joubert) and his sister Daniela (Rossella Di Lucca), who we only see at the end as she’s always locked inside the bathroom. We see that Fabietto is completely in love with his parents’ love story, as they seem to still be in love like the first day they met even after so many years. Unfortunately, we find out that Saverio was actually cheating on Maria, and this was no news. To try and patch things up, Saverio and Maria buy a house in the countryside, where they will meet their ill fate. When asked why he wasn’t at the countryside house with his parents the day of the accident, Fabietto recalls being at the stadium to watch Maradona play in one of his historical matches, and on old uncle screams that he’s been saved by “the hand of God.” This happens towards half of the movie, and the following part of it will be a recount of how Fabietto and Marchino are handling the loss of their parents. Fabietto gets close to cinema and movie making, and at the end meets his mentor Antonio Capuano (Ciro Capano), who, in a very unsentimental dialogue, explains to him the real beauty of making movies.
Where is the poetry in all of this? The movie works just like a memory, with ageless relatives, and everyone always at their best and funniest moments, even when hit by the worst times. Every scene is shot in an amazingly mundane way, there is almost nothing special about them but every shot seems so incredibly magical. Sorrentino’s recalling of such a complicated but fundamental time in his life is full of the poetry of which everyone’s life is filled. It seems like a movie without any ambition, as the narrative is shapeless and the situations seem completely familiar. We watch Fabietto go from being a lost teenager to a man, probably one who grew up way too fast in order to be able to deal with such a loss so early in life. We see more and more the poetry though, as Fabietto always gets lost in the curiosity for even the smallest of his extended family’s little dramas. The beauty of it stands all in the little in between moments, in the pauses, in the moments of wait where nothing seems to happen, and it’s right there that Sorrentino lets us really go deep, both inside of his characters and inside ourselves.
There is quite a big reference to Fellini in this movie, not only because he actually is part of it. In fact, we hear Fellini’s voice in the film in the scene where Marchino goes to audition as a background actor for one of his movies, which remains unnamed. Other than this very direct reference, Sorrentino seems to pay homage to Fellini in the way he presents the women of the movie. They are all curvy full sized women, and they range in all ages. Besides the aforementioned beautiful aunt Patrizia, who Fabietto will define as his muse at the end of the film, we also have the Baroness Focale (Betty Pedrazzi). She’s a quite complicated woman, who will play an important role in Franchino’s life in a scene that was honestly quite disturbing.
Sorrentino makes a short account of probably one of the most difficult moments in his life and does so making it incredibly poetic and mundane. It works like a memory in which we want to get lost and possibly never get out of, even when it becomes unbearable. All of it taking place within the beautiful Naples of the 1980s, which quietly accompanies us through all of the poetry of the narration.