The film by Italian art director Alice Rohrwacher “Happy as Lazzaro” is about the peasant Lazzaro, who suddenly dies, but then resurrects. I believe that “Happy as Lazzaro” is the most amazing film of the Cannes film festival, which clearly claims the top prize.
Very little is known about the gospel of Lazzaro. He lived in the village of Bethany with his sisters, Maria and Martha; Jesus loved their family. When Lazzaro fell ill and died, Christ resurrected him. Many consider this act his greatest miracle. Probably in the paucity of information is the key to the powerful impact of the story of Lazzaro. Alice Rohrwacher, a 36-year-old rising star of European cinema and one of three female directors in the Cannes Film Festival competition, took the liberty of making Lazzaro the hero of her film. Her courage bore fruit. “Happy as Lazzaro” was accompanied by a twenty-minute applause.
You can argue - they say, the silence young man from the Rohrwacher movie has nothing to do with the biblical, what does it have to do with it? However, the level of Rohrwacher's mastery, and her close attention to religious symbols and subjects, shown in the two previous films, “Corpo celeste” and “Le meraviglie”, exclude coincidences. Lazzaro (angelic Adriano Tardiolo, similar to the models of Caravaggio) from her new picture is an ordinary peasant, but it is not for nothing that he lives in a village with numerous sisters. In addition, it is not by chance that exactly in the middle of the film suddenly dies, in order to later come to life in the same sudden way.
Like a real Italian, also come from under Florence - although half German and now lives in Berlin, - Alice Rohrwacher is at the same time fascinated by Christianity and resists him: gently teasing, spice up dogma with magic and psychology and fantasizes with might and main. For her, faith is a way to connect social realism on the screen, retreating further and further with each subsequent film, and a parable filled with original metaphors. In this everyday symbiosis with the documentary, Alice resembles a fellow craftsman - just as internally free and paradoxical Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Like him, Rohrwacher allows himself a two-part structure that is not typical for the European consciousness. The first half of “Happy as Lazzaro” is idyllic Italy, literally stuck in the past. The peasant community lives in the old way, ceaselessly cultivating the land and saving even on light bulbs (for each family there is only one, which constantly has to be unscrewed and carried from room to room). They still have no idea that serfdom was abolished in Italy. This is used by the cynical aristocrat who lives in the family castle of the Marquis Alfonsina de Luna (Nicoletta Braschi, actress Jim Jarmusch and wife of Roberto Benigni, one of the few stars in the film), which the peasants called the “poisonous snake”. A spoiled son, an apathetic manager and his pragmatic daughter, dig in her nest. They use the naivety of commoners, and their tobacco business is booming.
In the second half, separated from the first death of Lazzaro, the action is transferred from conditional feudalism immediately to developed capitalism, from the paradise countryside to the infernal margins of an unnamed metropolis. Randomly arrived police in their lands released the peasants. Those went to the city - and now they are huddled in cabins near the railway. The clan, stealing here and there, the grown-up Lazzaro girlfriend Antonia (in this role the older sister of the director, known in Italy Alba Rohrwacher) and her roguish husband Ultimo (brutal Catalan Sergi López) lead them. There the Lazzaro, who has not yet changed, and finds himself, after many years of oblivion, but not at all, catches them. Like Rip Van Winkle, he gazes in wonder at the brave new world. There is no ugly awnings in it - an impersonal banking system has taken its place. You will not give up to it, you will not be fooled by it.
Dedicated to the fate of the poor “Happy as Lazzaro” - a bitter and accurate social comment, dressed in clothes of a fairy tale. More precisely, life. Lazzaro, silently helping everyone and everyone, carrying an old granny on his hands, walking after chickens and sheep, always ready to take on someone else's work, is blissful, which imperceptibly turns into a saint. In the present world it is impossible to have another positive hero. Yes, he is not capable of action, swims by the will of the waves and does not resist, but it is Lazzaro - the keeper of the precious cherished knowledge of what is good and what is bad. And the memory of a small homeland, one for the peasants and their masters, - the utopian Inviolata, gathered by Rohrwacher from various Italian villages where the film was made. By the way, it was filmed by its permanent operator Hélène Louvart on a 16-millimeter film - the same relic, a relic of the past, like the whole Inviolata.
https://youtu.be/8NQUOYO1tow[Happy as Lazzaro - Official Trailer (2018)
](https://youtu.be/8NQUOYO1tow)
In “Happy as Lazzaro” there is a direct quote from “Little Flowers of St. Francis”, the main Italian saint, whose destiny and preaching of poverty connects the true Middle Ages with the fictional, from the film. Lazzaro, like Francis, leads a dialogue with a wolf and even seems to tame him: any predator succumbs to his meekness. However, the most poetic of the wonders of Lazzaro, Rohrwacher came up with herself. When his diverse and noisy, more like a camp, the family is not allowed to listen to the organ in the church, he takes the music behind him.
Alice Rohrwacher resurrects not only his hero, but also that great Italian cinema, which seemed to have finally gone to the bottom, like Atlantis, and turned into ashes, like Pompeii. Literally the other day, he died of Ermanno Olmi - it’s significant that the spirit of his best films is saturated with “Happy as Lazzaro”, although there is a pinch of Fellini with his “Amarcord”, an echo of Pasolini with his folk Gospel, the spirit of neorealists. In addition, not in the form of quotations, hints and references. Alice Rohrwacher - the flesh of the flesh of the same history, culture and earth, which for some time remained without the brightest of their singers. Now, instead of them, a new and unique female voice has sounded.
The illustrations are used in agreement with the Depositphotos photobank
Liked the article? Please click here for follow and don't forget to Upvote...
