What I know about the 1861 unification of Italy, from a peninsula governed by several small kingdoms into one nation state, could comfortably fit on the back of a postage stamp. I know it came ten years before German unification and took place in a European political landscape still coming to terms with the Napoleonic idea of "nationalism", but that is the extent of my knowledge on the subject. But this didn't prove a barrier to finding Mario Martone's 204 minute long historical epic,
Noi Credevamo, engrossing and hugely entertaining. Following the lives of three fictional young men (who come into contact with real founding fathers of the Italian state), the film looks at the history of the struggle from multiple angles. Martone looks at different factions and competing political philosophies as he charts the progress of the movement from the beginnings of Mazzini's "Giovane Italia" society in 1928, to Garibaldi's thwarted attempt to capture Rome in 1962. What follows is an international story, with scenes in French, Sicilian and English (as well as Italian), in a story that takes us from Italy to Paris, London and Austria. Not since Barry Lyndon have I seen a cinematic representation of the period as richly detailed and complex as this since Barry Lyndon, helped by authentic costume and set design, and by a stirring score (by Hubert Westkemper). Probably the best thing about the film is that, despite the fact that its release is close to the 150th anniversary of unification, it is not celebratory or patriotic. The men we follow see their lives marked by hardship and tragedy thanks to their dedication to a life of violent struggle. At one point the actions of the nationalists are seemingly likened to those of the IRA or ETA, as a plot to blow up Napoleon III in Paris fails to kill the monarch, instead it brings about the massacre of a number of ordinary French citizens. And once the country is unified, the surviving revolutionaries find themselves irrelevant in the new Italy, which doesn't live up to their original egalitarian ideal ("Italy is petty, hauty, murderous" bemoans one man).
Perhaps the stylistic verve of the opening hour is not matched by the remainder of the picture - with one early oath-taking scene shot in a bold and eye-catching series of close-ups set against a black backdrop - but it is always beautifully put together. Especially as it knowingly subverts what I'm going to call the "Dolmio aesthetic", as it shows that ad-land picture of olive green, rural Italy, littered with disfigured corpses undermining the natural beauty. Unification has come at a cost and many do not benefit from its new "freedoms". It is not often that I can sit through a film of this length and honestly say I was never bored. Yet, Noi Credevamo held my interest superbly. I've previously given warm reviews to other Italian competition entrants, La passione and La pecora nera, whilst bemoaning the fact that their localised references and humour could see them struggle to find distribution outside of Italy. But in Noi Credevamo, I think there is a new Italian film with the international box office potential of Il Divo and Gomorrah. An important film in every sense of the word and another serious contender for the Golden Lion here.