Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1115758
12 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 12 MAY 2019 FILM FILM WRONGLY attributed to the Buddha, the adage that "pain is inevitable, but suffering op- tional" is a truism that does very much apply to the impos- sibly unfazed eponymous pro- tagonist of Alice Rohrwacher's Cannes-touted Italian drama Lazzaro Felice ('Happy as Laz- zaro'). Played with an impressively placid consistency by new- comer Adriano Tardiolo, who veers on the right side of both creepy and angelic while skew- ing towards both and remain- ing just otherwordly enough in the process, Lazzaro represents an anachronistic feat of endur- ance that brings to mind both the 'Golden Hearts' of early Lars von Trier, as well as – at a stretch – exemplary charac- ters of quiet resistance in more recent European cinema, such as the nun-in-waiting Ida in Paweł Pawlikowski's award- winning 2013 film of the same name, who in the end prefers the convent to the churn of the modern world. More recent paragons of qui- et suffering can also be found: perhaps most notably in Alfon- so Cuaron's award-winning, partly autobiographical Roma, which bears another connec- tion to Rohrwacher's third fea- ture in its unflinching critique of hegemonic power structures and the consistent and insidi- ous way they keep the lower echelons of society down. Happy as Lazzaro is, howev- er, a more sumptuous-looking and whimsical feature than all of the above, for all of its ideo- logical clarity and righteous, though subsumed, rages. In- stead of going for gritty real- ism, Rohrwacher – who also wrote its Cannes Festival-win- ning screenplay and casts her sister Alba in a spoiler-y role during the film's second half – crafts something that more closely resembles an allegorical fable about institutional injus- tice across time and space. Taking a cue from a little- known news story that broke out in Italy in the nineties, Rohrwacher introduces us to the remote – and entirely fic- tional – rural town of 'Invio- lata' (cruel irony: 'untouched'), situated somewhere in Italy and appearing to exist in a temporal limbo. Blissfully unaware of the world outside of its confines, its denizens are made to toil for the benefit of Alfonsina de Luna (Nicoletta Braschi), a to- bacco maven known as 'Queen of Cigarettes'. Though they do grumble to de Luna's foreman Nicola (Natalino Balasso) about their meagre wages, and the fact that they somehow always manage to end up in debt, the farmers continue to do the work that's asked of them without offering any hint of resistance… largely because they remain ignorant of the fact that such a share- cropping agreement has been outlawed for some decades. And just like the de Lunas exploit Inviolata, so Inviolata's citizens take advantage of the young Lazzaro's unquestioning and eager servitude. But the dynamic gains an added twist of the knife when the eldest son of the de Luna household, Tancredi (Luca Chikovani) takes an interest in Lazzaro, letting him into a fantasy game where the pair are knight-er- rant half-brothers taking on a cruel and unjust world. Rohrwacher's film walks a steady tightrope of near- constant heartbreak, with the viewer primed to expect Laz- zaro to suffer injustice at every turn. But instead of indulging in the cruel and often gratui- tous excesses of a Von Trier, Rohrwacher plays a gentler game, weaving in humour, hu- manity into a storytelling tap- estry rich in both archetypal allusion and realist urgency. In Italian, 'lazzaro felice' is an idiomatic expression used to describe anyone who appears doggedly content despite the clearly adverse conditions they find themselves in, but roughly round the half-way mark, a relationship to the Biblical La- zarus is also forged, a narrative move that solidifies what was previously whimsical into the explicitly fantastic. Being a flight of fantasy that remains committed to its polit- ical edge, it makes for a potent cocktail, the fable-like struc- ture allowing an uncluttered dissection of unequal power dynamics to shine through. Admirably, Rohrwacher also succeeds in championing the cause of her cast of outcasts without resorting to petty and offensive romanticism. She al- lows the icky Nicola – dubbed a 'viper' to his face by the vil- lagers – to fall on that sword instead. Totting up their contribu- tions to the de Lunas, he be- gins to wax lyrical about how their food and drink is so much richer and more pure than the diluted stuff they now get in the city. That they should feel hon- oured to be so 'pure' them- selves. But his mood quickly shifts as he returns to his account book, and continues to perpetuate 'the great swindle'. Alice Rohrwacher's dissection of capitalist injustice is a cutting but strangely magical fable that resonates with deep righteousness HAPPY AS LAZZARO HAPPY AS LARRY DOING JUST FINE NOT OKAY GO AWAY ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ The verdict While offering an unflinch- ing and deeply upsetting gaze into the unequal power structures of capitalism both past and present, Happy as Lazzaro also manages to be a rich and rewarding fable, limned with a magical glow that keeps cynicism and hopelessness at bay. Mixing in a team of first-time ac- tors and non-professionals with established names, Alice Rohrwacher creates something of a minor mira- cle, which is likely to remain resonant for years to come. Teodor Reljic ★ ★ ★ ★ H A P P Y A S L A Z Z A R O ( 12 A ) An insidious happiness Happy with what you have to be happy with: Adriano Tardiolo and Alba Rohrwacher