Fridae

The director of Cinema Paradiso seems to have something very important to tell us. Set in the impoverished town of Bagheria (lovingly called Baarìa by its residents) in Palermo, and stocked with peasants and near-serfs chaffing at their lot in life, toiling under the thumb of wealthy landowners working hand in glove with a succession of politicos and thugs, Baarìa is a meandering epic that takes its viewers through at least 50 years of history in Sicily, from the inter-war period to modern times.

There is some sort of focus to this film, in the form of its nominal protagonist, Peppino the goatherd. In this film, three generations of his humble peasant family endured the degradations of poverty and bullying by landlords and local political barons. This could be really relentlessly depressing, but there are bright spots, such as playing jokes on the universally feared and equally reviled Fascists, looting the governor’s mansion during an American air strike, joining the Italian Communist Party, running for political representation, and struggling to make Baarìa a better place to live in.

The real character in Baarìa is the town of Baarìa, populated by its ill-fated residents who weave in and out of the town’s history with their individual tales, very much like a serialised radio drama. Giuseppe Tornatore composes the story like a grand opera, milking emotion from the frequent tragedies and rare triumphs of commoners.

I said this film could be relentlessly depressing. Peppino is a goatherd and the citizens of Baarìa are peasants after all. What chance do any of them stand against the Blackshirts, the landlord with his private army, or even the town’s blind, corrupt mayor? But still the town grows horizontally, brick buildings gave way to concrete ones, and horses are replaced by automobiles. They struggled, but perhaps not in vain.

Baarìa is what you’d get if the director of a National Day Parade decides one year to tell the story of a place that doesn’t matter, through the eyes of people who don’t matter, people who don’t come out on top but continue doing their thing. Giuseppe Tornatore proves that ditching the clichéd textbook treatment of Grand History could still result in something mesmerising, heart-warming, and a reason for celebration – and probably more authentic too.