As with “The Traitor,” another overview of a changing world, Marco Bellocchio's political sympathies are not hidden, but the dilemmas and perplexities his characters face can often be oversimplified. Here in “Kidnapped”, he recounts a shameful episode in the last days of papal secular power before the unification of the Italian State, in which the authorities (they of the “Holy Office) ordain a 6-year-old Jewish boy” from infamy. of the Inquisition) to be torn from the arms of his parents because of an alleged furtive and illicit baptism performed when he was a child, turning him into a Christian who, for the protection of his immortal soul, could no longer be raised in a Jewish family . He is taken to Rome, to be raised in an institution for converted boys destined for the priesthood, while his case becomes an international scandal, exploited by anticlerical circles throughout Europe and beyond, to the immense irritation of the Pope and the Curia. .
The notion of dogma is central to Bellocchio's story (he co-wrote the script), and both those of the Church and the Jewish community leave the boy, Edgardo, lying between the two, emotionally crippled. (To be sure we get the point, Edgar innocently recites a rote definition of the word during a visit by the Pope.) And the annexation of the Papal States by the anticlerical Kingdom of Italy, which should have set aside religious impediments for The then young adult Edgardo's resumption of a relationship with his family also fails in the cause of secularization and human agency through the intercession of the dead hand of yet another dogma, this one of a secular legal kind. In this way, any possibility of putting aside the impediments to loving human relationships vanishes.
Director: Marco Bellocchio
Writers: Marco Bellocchio, Susanna Nicchiarelli, Edoardo Albinati
Stars: Paolo Pierobon, Fausto Russo Alesi, Barbara Ronchi
The narrative is uneven and at times a little by-the-numbers, but the script, while exaggerated in some places, in others shows self-control, for example by not attempting to caricature the treatment that Edgardo received at the hands of the Church. as brutal (beyond, of course, the brutality of the kidnapping itself and the continued separation of his family from him). While they clearly put institutional interest first, the priests and nuns are shown to act with kindness and even a form of love for the children in their care. Despite moments of rebellion, Edgardo is shown to be irrevocably absorbed in his world, even as change swirls around him. The psychological evolution here could have been treated with greater precision and subtlety, but Bellocchio in the end makes clear his point, which I understand is that there is no turning back for the forces that shape us, no matter how perverse.
Visually the film is a delight. Bellocchio, the so-called “beautiful eye”, gives us pictorial sequences saturated with color; some of the interior shots look downright, if self-consciously, Vermeerish. And Bellocchio always has a gift for casting: in the end “Kidnapped” may be worth seeing just for Paolo Pierobon's tremendous performance as Pius IX, the last Pope to reign over the Papal States, whose headstrong, unwavering self-certainty (was he who formalized the doctrine of papal infallibility even when his political actions demonstrated the opposite) served as an accelerator of his final downfall. (Pierobon's physical resemblance, in different respects, to both the late John Paul II and Benedict XVI is surely not accidental.) Many other smaller roles are ideally played and vividly portrayed. Like “The Traitor,” this is very much an ensemble performance, and it's even better.
“Kidnapped” is an honorable effort to address a complex subject, and even if it ultimately settles for a simplistic exposition, it is worth watching. In an era when so many films focus so narrowly, often hermetically, on questions of self-actualization and personal relationships, it's nice to see a project with some ambition and scope, even one that, like here, doesn't fully deliver on its promise.
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