Grove’s Goldmine – Director Matteo Garrone

Director Matteo Garrone’s critically acclaimed drama “Gomorrah”, Italy’s official selection in last year’s Oscar race for best foreign film, won seven David di Donatello Awards in Rome May 8, Italy’s equivalent of the Oscars, writes Martin Grove. The film took home statuettes for best picture, director, screenplay, producer, editor, sound and original song.

For some insights into the making of “Gomorrah” here’s a look back at Martin Grove’s Goldmine of columns and what Matteo Garrone said about the film in December 2008.

Oscar’s best picture race gets the lions share of attention from Hollywood handicappers, but it’s not the Academy’s only best picture category.

Another best picture race to keep an eye on is the one for best foreign language film. One of this year’s leading contenders, Italy’s official selection “Gomorrah”, opens today (12/19) via IFC Films for a one week Oscar qualifying run before reopening theatrically Feb. 13.

Directed by Matteo Garrone, “Gomorrah” is based on the international best selling book by Roberto Saviano. Its screenplay is by Maurizio Braucci, Ugo Chiti, Gianni De Gregorio, Matteo Garrone, Massimo Gaudioso and Roberto Saviano.

“Gomorrah” is set in the world of the Camorra, the organized crime group controlling a wide range of legal and illegal businesses in an area of Italy that includes the provinces of Naples and Caserta. The film, which won the Grand Prix at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, dominated the European Film Awards in Copenhagen Dec. 6, winning best film, director, actor, screenwriter and cinematographer. It’s since been nominated for best foreign film in both the Golden Globes and Broadcast Film Critics Association awards, giving it a good shot at a best foreign film Oscar nod. “Gomorrah” was well received earlier this year at such key film festivals as Telluride, Toronto, New York, Chicago and AFI.

After greatly enjoying an early look at this violent, intense and powerfully gripping movie, I was delighted when Matteo Garrone called recently from Italy to talk about the making of “Gomorrah”. “I started to work on this project at the very beginning,” he told me. “It was just two weeks after the book was published. That was in the summer of 2006. At that time, the book was not yet a best seller and Saviano was not under (government) protection yet. You know that Saviano is under protection because of the problem with the Camorra?”

When Garrone first met Saviano in ’06, he explained, “we spoke about the idea to work together on the screenplay and then many things changed because after a few months he started to have serious problems with Camorra. We wrote the screenplay in Rome in my house and then when I went to Naples to find locations and to start the preparation of the movie I was very worried because to go to the real place to make a movie from a writer that is under protection is not so (smart). But I really was very surprised by the fact that the people wanted to help us make the movie because they loved cinema so much. They didn’t care that it came from a book by Saviano. I worked there with the help of the people that lived there and that know very well about Camorra.”

Reflecting on Camorra, he said, “When you go inside this reality and go in that territory the first thing you discover is that there is not a clear line between good and bad, black and white, but there is a gray zone where all is confused — legal and illegal, good and bad. That’s also something that I tried to put in the movie — how easy it is for people that grow up in that territory to make mistakes and to fall inside the system and do something you can regret for all your life.”

Garrone took the screenplay he and Saviano wrote in Rome and worked to verify its story with people living where Camorra operates. “Sometimes I (altered) the screenplay (after) talking with people that asked me to (make a) change,” he added. “To be honest, the people who live there were the first audience of the movie. When we made the movie, behind the monitor when we were shooting there were always about 40 or 50 people looking at the scene. For me it was very important (to get) the reaction of the people that live there.”

“Gomorrah” Director Matteo Garrone

Shooting took place over a three month period. Asked if it was difficult to get financing to shoot such a controversial film, Garrone replied, “It was not a very expensive movie. When we started to work on the screenplay, the book was not a best seller, but after that Saviano came under protection and the book became a best seller. So with a book that sold one million copies just in Italy it’s not difficult to find the money. I think the movie cost about four or five million lire (roughly between U.S.$2.9 million and U.S.$3.6 million).”

The movie Garrone made looks very real, almost as though he shot it as it was actually happening rather than creating it for the screen. “The book is like a reportage so it was very important to be close to this soul of the book,” he pointed out, and “to give the audience the feeling of being there — to be inside, because Saviano wrote the book from inside. So it was very important for me to go inside that reality and try to give back to the audience the same emotional experience that I lived staying there. I wanted to disappear as a director. I wanted to be very simple because the material was so strong. I thought that any comment from me could penalize the movie.”

When he tried using classical music in the film, he recalled, it stuck out “because this material doesn’t need any comment. I didn’t want to say what the audience has to think (as to) who is good and who is bad. I didn’t want to make any judgment about that. I wanted to leave the audience free to judge themselves about (organized crime) and about people trying to survive in this reality. As you saw, it’s a jungle where everybody’s trying to survive. It’s very difficult when you go inside this reality to say in Italy who is good and who is bad because people grow up there and sometimes people are not aware about their conditions. It’s very sad, but it’s something I found talking to these people.

“We wanted to tell the story (visually of a) conflict of human people. Because I come from painting, for me the most important thing when I decide to work on a project is the image. When I read the book there were so many powerful images that made me decide to do this movie. And, also, I wanted to make a Mafia movie different from all the others that I saw before and without glamorizing the characters. I was trying to shoot the movie from a different point of view.”

In “Gomorrah” five different major storylines are woven together. “That was very difficult for us,” he said. “The book was full of stories. There were probably a hundred stories, but without any dramaturgy developed. So we decided on five and developed (those stories). People that read the book (and) saw the movie found the soul of the book, but also something different because we reinvented some stories. I think the book and the movie are complimentary. One helps the other.”

Looking at the biggest production challenges he faced telling five separate but related stories, Garrone told me, “It’s always difficult when you start a movie and then after two weeks you have to finish and start again with another story with another actor. It’s always difficult because when you start to have a relationship with the actor they trust in you and you trust in them and then it’s finished. So every two weeks we started a new story.”

Unlike most films that shoot scenes out of sequence because it costs less to do everything in one location at one time, Garrone said he “shot in sequence from scene one to scene 40 so the actor can develop his character and live. I used to go back to shooting after editing. I shot the movie in three months and I edited it for four and then I went back for about two weeks to shoot again. It’s a very long process. It’s very important for me (to be able to do reshooting). I used to talk to the producer before and save money to have this possibility (of reshooting).”

How does he prepare to shoot? “I haven’t storyboarded he replied, “but I make a lot of pictures and find locations. The locations for me are very important for the story of the characters. For instance, the story of the two boys acting like Tony Montana (Al Pacino’s ultra-violent character) in ’Scarface,’ is the theme of the confusion between reality and fiction. It’s a very deep theme that comes from Don Quixote-Sancho Panza. It was very important for that story to give the feeling of a sort of anarchy of freedom so (it) was important that there was open space (at) the location.”

He wanted those characters to be “in contact with the open space to give the sense of freedom. It’s the opposite of the young boy (in another storyline) who wanted to go inside the clan and when he’s inside he discovers that it’s different from how he thought. It was important to give this character a sense of claustrophobia.”

Garrone did this by putting him in an environment of cold sprawling cement buildings that conveyed the feeling of a closed-in space. It reminded me of the way Fellini shot scenes dominated by impersonal cement apartment buildings that conveyed the alienation of his characters in “La Dolce Vita”. Antonioni did the same equally well in “La Notte”. The desolate emptiness of the urban landscapes in which their characters lived went a long way toward explaining the emptiness of their lives. “It reminded me also of science-fiction movies like ‘Blade Runner’,” Garrone added.

Moreover, Garrone holds some of those long shots portraying the isolation of his characters for an unusually long time, again bringing to mind the way Fellini and Antonioni hammered home the feeling of isolation from nature by making us sit there and watch and watch and watch in long shot as nothing happened on the screen. “You know, I’m the cameraman of the movie,” Garrone pointed out as we started talking about the cinematography. “For me it’s important for the composition to be (just right). I’m the cameraman because I like to invent with the actors during the scene.

“It’s not the actor that moves and follows the camera, but the camera that follows the actor. It’s like a dance with the actor. Sometimes something happens that’s a unique moment. That’s what I’m looking for — something unique. So it’s important for me to be (operating the) camera so I can maybe focus on a detail that I can’t tell to another cameraman because sometimes if you tell it to someone else it’s already passed. You have to be (the cameraman) to find it immediately.”

As the credits for “Gomorrah” bill Marco Onorato as Director of Photography, I asked Garrone who did what in shooting the movie and he explained that Onorato did the lighting while Garrone operated the camera. Clearly, it was a very successful partnership as the film looks great with lighting that’s appropriately dramatic where it should be while at other times it helps convey the bleakness of the characters’ lives and their unending sense of despair.