Happy New Year to all Film Lovers!
Our next screening is coming up. The following are the details. As always please reserve your seats in advance by return email.
DATE: Wednesday January 25, 2012
TIME: 7:00 PM.
PLACE: The Hamilton Club - http://www.thehamiltonclub.com/
FILM: Il Vento Fa Il Suo Giro - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0483206/
PROGRAM: Introduction, film & Q/A by Professor Gallippi followed by wine & cheese
See you at the movies!
CINEMA INSIEME: January 26, 2012
ReplyDeleteIl vento fa il suo giro (The Wind Blows Round, 2005) by Giorgio Diritti
The comments and the conversation last night were mostly directed towards the ending of the film, which is the part most people heard clearly. There were also questions about the character of the village fool and what he might symbolize in the scheme of the film. Some were surprised and some not so surprised by the way the inhabitants of Chersogno (fictitious name derived from Monte Chersogno in Cuneo, Piedmont) refused to see the arrival of Philippe Heraud (Thierry Toscan) and his family as a rebirth of the village. It is true that Philippe and his wife Chris (Alessandra Agosti) keep their three children in tune with their own beliefs and choose to ignore the religion and habits of the villagers. However, the life of these villagers is obviously resigned to the fact that Chersogno has become, like many villages in the area, a ghost town that is animated only during those several weeks when the city folk make it their vacation spot. Therefore, Philippe and his family are a chance to animate this village in a very different way. For the short time that they are there, life enters this moribund town by revitalizing the villagers’ relationship with the land. And this, I believe, is one of the powerful statements made by Diritti, who may have inserted the character of the village fool as a sensor to detect or measure the health of the village. To be sure, his well-being and sanity is intact while Philippe and his family are present. When they leave he loses his will to live because the village chooses the path of death rather than rebirth.
The film seems to suggest that the recipe for true human identity involves people, language, and landscape interacting. The mayor Costanzo (Dario Anghilanti), who deeply believes in the rebirth of the village through Philippe, sees nothing new or romantic in this unexpected event. He recognizes it as a part of his heritage that the wind has blown back into this depopulated valley. Hence, the title Il vento fa il suo giro (continued with: e prima o poi ogni cosa ritorna [and sooner or later all things return]). Philippe and his family represent a rediscovery of the rhythms of Nature and the realization that Italy has lost much of its heritage and its identity. And one of the ironies in Diritti’s film is that this lost identity is being resurrected, so to speak, not by the Italian characters, who are more interested in nostalgia and tourism, but by the foreigner Philippe and his family. On this level of interpretation, the fool may be seen as a scapegoat; he is the sacrifice that has awakened the fire lit in the wood burning stove by the young man at the end of the film in what was once the home of the Heraud family.
Franco Gallippi, PhD in Italian Studies
Thank you, Franco, for selecting this wonderful film. It is thought provoking and even disturbing. The question of identity, as you say, is central. But what is that identity? You mention people, language, landscape, but the list can be prolonged. Viewers at our screening asked about the meaning of what is surely a key element in the understanding of the film: the parable, at the end, of the “cadaver” that keeps on dying in spite of the entreaties of many people to live. Finally, when the entire world surrounds him with love, he gets up and walks. I think it is clear to all of us that the “cadaver” is a metaphor for the dying culture of the town: its traditions, languages, and, yes, its sense of identity. Interestingly, the dying man is called a “cadaver” (i.e., an already dead body) that, paradoxically, continues to die. The oxymoron of a living cadaver is a very apt one to describe these disappearing cultures.
DeleteAt first blush, Diritti seems to say that these dying cultures can be resurrected, if only we show enough love. But, on reflection, the contradictions and incongruities between the parable’s happy ending and the film make us feel uncomfortable. We ask ourselves, exactly what is it that is dying and should, like a Lazarus, be resurrected? The simple, idyllic life? The language? The art of making good cheese? Certainly. But, as we continue down our list of things lost which the wind may bring back, we find many myths and dark places. A case in point, the story of how the townsfolk under Nazi occupation would hide the hay in the church so the enemy could not use it, and later redistribute it to the people. The story is repeated several times through the film, and it may, indeed be true. However, the old man, in his role as town chronicler, when retelling it to the media, embellishes it and mythologizes it into a paradigm of what it is to be a community. He calls it the “gueiro” (I think that’s how it was spelled). People taking turns at helping each other, looking out for each other, being a “community”. “Gueiro” is their word for “giro”—the circle of connectiveness and responsibility--which immediately gives us another perspective into the title and the film’s central metaphor. Such is the collective memory of the town. But it is a myth, for in reality, when put to the test, the townsfolk fail at being a “community”, though the mythmaking continues, helped by the media always eager to report/create something that may or may not be real. “Il vento fa il suo giro” and sooner or later everything returns, including some old ways and feelings. The return to the past is also a descent into the primeval emotions of envy, greed, hypocrisy... Perhaps there was a reason why so many people left, and continue to leave, and it’s not just economic. The desire of the French family to settle in the village is only remarkable in the context of so many of its native sons leaving, and perhaps the way he is driven out gives us some insight into why others may have left.
It is interesting that, immediately after the parable is narrated, the last image we are left with is that of the “village idiot”--who, by definition, knows what others can’t see--pretending to fly. Is it the wind doing its “giro”, perhaps in all its ironies this time? Or is it a flight of liberation—as all flight is--from that living cadaver, which he has now finally achieved through death?
Fiorigio Minelli