"Gomorra"

Last Saturday, I saw an Italian movie "Gomorra," (Gomorrah) directed by Matteo Garrone, based on book by Roberto Saviano. The screenplay was credited to Maurizio Braucci, et al.

It contained a series of brutal and heart wrenching tales in gangster- and drug-infested Naples, Italy, concentrated on a housing project compound that had the character of a human dump. Watching people trapped in the hopeless situations was difficult and sobering experience. The movie was brutal but not nauseating. Violence was portrayed as a matter of fact, not depicted as sensual experience as Hollywood might have done, or pornographic sadism, à la Mel Gibson.

Such a hard life, trapped in eternal hopelessness reminded me a Romanian movie: "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," written and directed by Cristian Mungiu, which told a story that takes place in Romania in 1987. Different culture, different class of people, different variety of trap, yet the same bleakness. Inevitably, I also think about the many human tragedies happening everywhere.

Humankind is damned, but some people are more damned than others.