Paolo Sorrentino’s masterpiece Hand of God (È stata la mano di Dio) is on the final shortlist of contenders for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The narrative of this film, his most intimate and visceral yet, of profoundly emotional content, was inspired by a personal tragedy, the accidental, premature death of his parents while he was still an adolescent. The tragedy is the catalyst for the staging of a kaleidoscopic, at times Felliniesque, fresco of Naples in the Eighties, buzzing with human and cultural vibrancy, enchanted by the legend of Maradona and the social redemption he represented.
"I am thrilled by this nomination. It is a huge victory for me and very moving because it is a prestigious recognition of the film’s themes, which are the things I believe in: irony, liberty, tolerance, pain, carefreeness, willpower, the future, Naples and my mother”, commented Paolo Sorrentino who won the same Oscar in 2014 for The Great Beauty. "It has taken huge team work to get to this point. For which I must thank Netflix, Fremantle, The Apartment, the incredible actors and an unforgettable crew. And, of course, my children and my wife who love me in the best of ways: without ever taking me seriously.”
Netflix, who financed the production entirely without recourse to tax credit or other state incentives, decided to release 250 copies of the film theatrically in November 2021 (although there were approx. 400 requests from theatre managers) and programmed it from 15 December on the platform, which has become one of the biggest film producers in just a few years. "We’ve gone from theatre managers boycotting Netflix films like Cuaron’s Roma or Scorsese’s The Irishman to requests for more copies” noted Andrea Occhipinti whose Lucky Red distributed the film theatrically, emphasizing how the mechanisms of cinema management have changed completely in such a short time.
The film, also a candidate at the EFA and Baftas and winner of the Gran Premio della Giuria at the Venice Film Festival, is an intense love letter from the director to his city, to the melancholic spirit and contradictory, disarming charm of Naples, capable of inducing laughter and tears at the same time. The opening images show the bay at night as the camera skims across the water in a silent, breath-taking painting. Following are vignettes of her beauty, as authentic as it is ostentatious: the main character’s colourful extended family swimming together on the Sorrento coast in the protected marine area of Punta Campanella; the smugglers’ motorboat speeding away from the Coast Guard at Massa Lubrense; the arrival by sea on the beach of the Amalfi coast and the port of Cetara; the trip to Agerola, with the grotesque and overblown family jokes and enormous meals; the charming, nocturnal Vespa ride along the seashore of Castel dell'Ovo when young Fabietto (Filippo Scotti), Sorrentino’s alter ego, drives his parents, his slightly louche father (Toni Servillo) and playful mother (Teresa Saponangelo), to the home of his provocative and seductive aunt (Luisa Ranieri) who has argued once again with her husband. Then there is Capri, her piazzetta majestically silent in a night empty of tourists and Stromboli, the adolescent Sorrentino’s usual holiday destination.
Other locations in Naples include some of the city’s most iconic places: in addition to the shoreline, Piazza Plebiscito, Galleria Umberto I, where the lead character falls in love with cinema, the San Paolo Stadium (now dedicated to Maradona) reproduced as it was in the 1980s in post-production, the apartment in the Vomero neighbourhood, via Chiaia, the Cemetery of Poggioreale. The thousand colours of a city, Naples, honoured by the Oscar-winning director with the closing music, Napule è, over images of the lead character heading towards his future. The choice of this song pays homage to two iconic figures in Neapolitan art: both Pino Daniele the revolutionary musician, and Massimo Troisi, the great actor and director whom Sorrentino identifies as the guiding light of his latest work, whose wonderful film Le vie del Signore sono finite (1987) hovers above it.
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(Carmen Diotaiuti)