Part of the Picture: War in Peace

WAR IN PEACE

AUG 23, 2008 – EVEN ACCOUNTING FOR TASTE BEING SUBJECTIVE, and uplift usually triumphing over unhappiness as the favoured film-going takeaway, Gabriele Salvatores’ Mediterraneo is an unusually lightweight winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. (It won in 1991 – over heavyweights like Zhang Yimou’s Raise the Red Lantern and Sven Nykvist’s The Ox.) An overview of the plot certainly presents possibilities. A band of Italian soldiers is stranded on a Greek island during the madness of World War II, and when they lose their means of transportation and communication – which is to say, when they are cut off from “civilisation” (ironic quotes fully intentional) – they slowly realise that they’ve lucked into those most precious of wartime commodities: peace and idyll.

But the problem, for a while, is that nothing happens – at least, nothing that stays with you. Scenes evaporate from your mind even before your eyes have finished absorbing them – and the question that arises, therefore, is this: Is Salvatores a middlebrow hack who knows one thing and one thing only, which is to orchestrate a mood of pastoral banality (set amidst tranquil surroundings) that functions as nothing more than cinematic balm, soothing frayed nerves at the end of a frazzled workday? Or is it intentional, this pleasing nothingness? Is this lack of event actually a carefully constructed counterpoint to the world outside, which is boiling over with headline-ready happenings? These are the times you feel like a fraud for attempting to appraise an art form that can, on occasion, prove frustratingly vague about its true intentions.

But at least an interpretative intention can be gleaned from the sequences that revolve around Vassilissa (Vanna Barba), the local beauty who’s introduced to us as she demands to see Sgt. Nicola Lo Russo (Diego Abatantuono). When the soldier named Farina (Giuseppe Cederna) walks into the sergeant’s chambers with this unusual request, Lo Russo, who’s just had himself a shave and whose attentions are now focused entirely on defining the contours of his beard, can’t bring himself to care. “If she wants to talk, show her in. If not, she can stay outside.” Farina begins to leave, but then, scratching his brow, he reveals that she is beautiful. The extra information has the desired effect. Lo Russo fluffs up his collar in anticipation. Vassilissa walks in.

And in pidgin Italian, this Greek goddess makes it known that she’s looking for work. When Lo Russo asks her about the kind of work she does, she replies that she’s a puta. Perhaps unsure that the word means the same in her language as it does in his, Lo Russo looks uncomfortably at his soldiers and mumbles, “Puta is Greek for…?” One of them replies, in no uncertain terms, “A whore.” Lo Russo lifts an arm as if to reprimand this soldier for his tactlessness, but Vassilissa nods that that is indeed her profession. “You’re interested?” she demands, and Lo Russo – after a glance in the direction of his salivating subordinates – imbues his response with equal parts authority and ardour. “I have to glance at the regulations… but we’re very… we’d be interested.”

The next scene, Lo Russo is surrounded by his soldiers as he reads out from the fornication schedule he’s prepared. “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Off on Thursday. Friday, Saturday, double shifts. Sunday: day off. Understood?” A subordinate demands, “Why not alternate days?” Lo Russo replies, “Because this is what I decided. The order is based on age and rank. So, I’m first.” Accordingly, a little later, he is seen exiting Vassilissa’s home with a satisfied song on his lips. “Speak to me of love, Marie. All my life, it’s you. Your lovely eyes are shining. Like two stars, they twinkle. Tell me it’s not a dream…” And, suddenly, he switches to his speaking voice to brag, “I destroyed her.”

They’re completely cut off from the war that rages in the world outside, and yet Lo Russo can’t help talking of Vassilissa in the manner of an all-conquering hero, as if the blitzkrieg of his sexual prowess has reduced her to rubble. But worse is to come when Farina sleeps with Vassilissa. He decides that she’s the love of his life, and that she’s his and his alone. And, with the zeal of a patriot safeguarding his homeland, he arms himself with a rifle and fires at his compatriots when they attempt to reason with him that he cannot seize totalitarian control of Vassilissa, that she’s a democratic entity – for everyone. But Farina won’t listen. Trapped on this island, he may be unable to stave off enemies encroaching on his country, but he’ll be damned if he lets his friends cross the borders of Vassilissa’s house. And the director, who doesn’t seem such a hack anymore, appears to have said his piece: that the allure of war is undeniable, even in peace.

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Posted in: Cinema: Foreign