In Gianni Amelio’s film Lamerica, we see a country stricken with poverty brought on by communist and fascist governments, greed and corruption. The characters of Gino and Fiore, Italian businessmen filling the role of modern day carpetbaggers, enter Albania to start a puppet company in hopes of swindling money out of their investors. However, in order to even reach as far as grants and financial talks, they need to appoint a native Albanian as company chairman. What could only be described as a dark comedy of errors they choose a homeless man held as a political prisoner, so old and downtrodden he barely remembers his name, let alone how to spell it. To further complicate this mad scheme, when he does remember, he remembers not the past fifty years in Albania, but the first twenty years of his youth - in Italy.
While this film was not meant to portray anything remotely humorous, it cannot help but do so as we see Gino chase his chairman Spiro across Albania after the man regains the memory of his youth and leaves for his remembered home in Italy. This is not a happy go-lucky humor but more a schadenfraude for the mishaps Gino encounters on his journey from egotistical executive to humble peasant. At each instance he parks his jeep to look for Spiro or find a bite to eat, you can see the naivety in his belief that nothing will happen to him or his possessions. For a con artist, this naivety is utterly endearing and makes him a character we can’t help but root for while we laugh at his predicament. We want him to see the despair and poverty around him, to become one with it, for only in experiencing it himself can he understand the people he is attempting to exploit. For him to learn on his journey that he has lost his job with his manufactured company brings a happy chuckle deep in the belly. He is taken for what he is, stripped of his nationality by means of his confiscated passport, and becomes one of the proverbial Them - the evacuee’s, the refugee’s, the Albanians.
Amelio may not have meant for this cinematic schadenfraude to occur, and for most people, they may not even see it there. The stunning cinematography, the careful background score mixed with moments of silence make the carefully crafted pictures of Albanian despair heartbreakingly beautiful. Nowhere Spiro and Gino go do we not see street children begging by the dozens or the old silent in their contemplations. One feels dramatically for the Albanians in their hope for a better future in Italy, but through it all, one cannot help but chuckle at the man who learns the hard way what life is like for them. And in his youthful arrogance, Gino most assuredly does.
While this film was not meant to portray anything remotely humorous, it cannot help but do so as we see Gino chase his chairman Spiro across Albania after the man regains the memory of his youth and leaves for his remembered home in Italy. This is not a happy go-lucky humor but more a schadenfraude for the mishaps Gino encounters on his journey from egotistical executive to humble peasant. At each instance he parks his jeep to look for Spiro or find a bite to eat, you can see the naivety in his belief that nothing will happen to him or his possessions. For a con artist, this naivety is utterly endearing and makes him a character we can’t help but root for while we laugh at his predicament. We want him to see the despair and poverty around him, to become one with it, for only in experiencing it himself can he understand the people he is attempting to exploit. For him to learn on his journey that he has lost his job with his manufactured company brings a happy chuckle deep in the belly. He is taken for what he is, stripped of his nationality by means of his confiscated passport, and becomes one of the proverbial Them - the evacuee’s, the refugee’s, the Albanians.
Amelio may not have meant for this cinematic schadenfraude to occur, and for most people, they may not even see it there. The stunning cinematography, the careful background score mixed with moments of silence make the carefully crafted pictures of Albanian despair heartbreakingly beautiful. Nowhere Spiro and Gino go do we not see street children begging by the dozens or the old silent in their contemplations. One feels dramatically for the Albanians in their hope for a better future in Italy, but through it all, one cannot help but chuckle at the man who learns the hard way what life is like for them. And in his youthful arrogance, Gino most assuredly does.
I really liked this film and it has been the best of the four I have viewed for the course so far.
ReplyDeleteGino's transformation from arrogant and superior Italian to someone as poor and desperate as the Albanians that surrounded him was a great story.