Esterno notte

Marco Bellocchio Esterno Notte Drama • 2022 • 5h 30m

Reviewed by Beatrice 20. August 2023

To think ill of others is a sin but often a guess

Bellocchio starts from the end by proposing an outcome different from the chronicle, so as not to give rise to misunderstandings. His umpteenth proposition of the Moro kidnapping, this time is stark: if the parliamentarian, statesman professor of law had been released by the red brigades he would have resigned from the DC with a clear and unequivocal speech.

Two parts divided into three points of view: the public political one, studded with secrets, distrusts, irresponsibilities, more or less voluntary and treacherous defaults; the family one, sober, intimate, private; the red brigades one with the choices, events, internal misunderstandings, the relationship with the kidnapped, between the criminality of political and revolutionary times and respect for dignity and faith.

The cross-section devoted to the Pope, then Paul VI along with the figure of Moro's wife through which the profiles and responsibilities of colleagues, friends/nemics/ indifferent to the human aspect of the case, for the benefit of the 'unmentionable and unacceptable openness of the DC parliamentarian to 33% of the Communist electorate, emerge sharply, are inevitably descriptive of all that happened in those months although " any reference to existing persons or facts that really happened" would be " purely coincidental"

Six episodes for TV, in theaters, part one from May 18, part two from June 9, 2022.

An impeccable narrative of troubled years, where the instrumentalization of the facts outweighs the criminality of them.

On March 16, on the very day of the 'inauguration of a government supported by the Communist party of which the DC president was the main proponent in the name of a presumptuously "naive" Catholic democracy, Aldo Moro is kidnapped and, after 50 days of captivity, amid demands, negotiations and misdeeds he is killed " although the truly revolutionary gesture would have been to free him" at least according to Bellocchio's Faranda.

A frequent visitor to the Bobbio director's films is the psychoanalyst's couch where Andreotti's psychopathology, Cossiga's bipolarity and Zaccagnini's notorious honesty are exposed, so as to make him a figure capable of understanding but not of power.

The symbol of the Christian Democracy party sees in the movie poster the cross covered with blood-red roses and the shield made of thorn brambles. This would be enough to identify THE point of view but the invitation to retrace those years in Bellocchio's film is imperative and the opportunity unmissable.

Those who do not want to make something known, after all, do not have to confess it even to themselves, because one must never leave a trace

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