Good Morning, Night

I've read the other comments on this board and I would like to precise that Aldo Moro at the time was not the Italian President and that obviously the Red Brigades were out for his blood because he was working skilfully at a compromise between the Christian Democrats and the Communists and that meant for the extremists of the left to be cut out from any kind of power or hold they might have on the Government. The film itself does not seek to give political answers and is much more concerned with the human aspects of the drama. It's more lyrical than realistic... if you're looking for action or for a docudrama, you should probably go elsewhere.

Marco Bellocchio takes a lot of chances in his films, examining human behavior in the face of dissension whether political, moral, or emotional. In 'Buongiorno, notte' ('Good Morning, Night') he studies the infamous 1978 kidnapping of Aldo Moro in what would be a situation that would raise as many questions as it gave answers - and it is that quality that Bellocchio has captured in his film.

The facts of the Italian political current in 1978 may not be understood by the general viewer, but suffice it to say that the ruling political party Democrazia Cristiana was challenged by the Red Brigade, the underground terrorists who kidnapped and killed President Aldo Moro in a coups that was eventually destroyed by the reigning powers. That much of a plot is all that is necessary to know. The bulk of the film revolves around the lives of the kidnappers, especially the sole woman Chiara (Maya Sansa) who with her compatriots hid the President in a tiny room with the threat of death, but also were influenced by the writings and conversations with Moro. The whole question of revolution is under close inspection. The story mixes documentary shots with the cinematography in a tasteful way of showing us the elements of the kidnapping and the aftermath. It is the reaction of Chiara to these events and the questioning that can disrupt the political leanings of revolutionaries that makes this story so very meaningful.

The cast is superb: Maya Sansa, Pier Giorgio Bellocchio, Giovanni Calcagno, Luigi Lo Cascio and Paolo Briguglia as the kidnappers, and Roberto Herlitzka as Aldo Moro are convincing and human. The script does have holes in it where formation of ideas and acts and incidents are vague, but it almost seems as though that is the intention of Bellocchio. In political upheaval nothing is black and white if the events are related through individual's eyes rather that through the reaction of the mobs. And this is what makes the film so fine, if a bit hard to follow.

"Good Morning, Night (Buongiorno, notte)" is an intriguing effort to understand terrorists.

Loosely based on a novel, writer/director Marco Bellocchio specifically re-imagines the kidnapping of Italian party leader Aldo Moro in 1987, with heavy use of television clips. The quaintly naive Cold War rhetoric, emphasized with odd historic black and white newsreel interstices such as of Stalinist parades, may now be seen as an examination of a symbolic precursor for today's gruesome politics, though he was already working on the film at 9/11.

The young idealists we are first introduced to seem as harmless as the radical pranksters in the contemporary "The Edukators (Die Fetten Jahre sind vorbei)." While it's a jolt to gradually learn their connection to the violent attack, first revealed as they cheer at the initial TV coverage, they seem so bumbling and nervous (one takes leave abruptly for, as it were, a conjugal visit as he feels he's the one being imprisoned; another gets fixated on an overly symbolic pet caged bird), it's never clear if they personally committed murder or if they're just the guardian cell taking orders from those who stage the mock trial and pull the triggers or if that is a moral difference that is intentionally considered irrelevant.

Real world politics do occasionally seep through in silent background commentary, through factory strikes and sarcastic graffiti, but the determined ideologues reject these actions as they see themselves as the true believers. Ironically, the drone of the TV coverage, with reports of related and unrelated violent acts around the country, they anxiously watch becomes as much a recitation as the opening pitch from the bored apartment rental agent.

Their Red Brigade aims seem so diffuse about intending to set off revolutions and counter-revolutions, compared to the more direct motives of the terrorists in "Paradise Now" (let alone how kidnapping has devolved into a business, as in "Secuestro Express"), at least to those not intimately familiar with Italian political dialectics, that it seems more understandable than ludicrous that the negotiations draw on. A long side bar scene where one of the kidnappers joins her family in a memorial service for World War II partisans nostalgically singing an anti-Fascist anthem, inspiring her to read a collection of letters resistance fighters wrote before their executions instead of her usual Lenin or Engels reading, makes the dialectics even more ironic as to what fascist behavior is. Her internal struggle to resolve these pressures, including several confusing dream sequences, is the core of the film and Maya Sansa, with very expressive eyes, is captivating as "Chiara."

The kidnapping itself takes on a "Ransom of Red Chief" feel as the Aldo Moro character, well-played by Roberto Herlitzka and the point of the film's dedication to the auteur's father, is much more of an eloquent, dignified, paternal humanist statesman than a typical politician. The kidnappers seem to be thwarted in provoking political crisis because he will only write personal, non-political notes to his family, particularly his grandson (even if does seem as if he's writing love notes to his mistress rather than to his wife). But his appeal to the pope and the pope's involvement in the negotiations and their aftermath seems as incongruous as an odd séance by political supporters or the kidnappers doing a blessing before eating. Compared to the director's earlier "My Mother's Smile (L'Ora di religione: Il sorriso di mia madre)," religion is only an ancillary issue.

The auteur's voice, as an artist, seems to speak through a somewhat naive and flirtatious friend of "Chiara"s who has written a screenplay about radicals and quotes the Emily Dickinson poem that inspired the title. He argues that the imagination can be a powerful force in influencing people, though of course the authorities misinterpret his involvement.

I saw it with a defective soundtrack, but other than odd musical commentary with bombastic selections from "Aida" and Pink Floyd, the film's strength is faces and looking into the eyes of deluded cogs in the wheel of historical forces, though the best sequence is given away in the trailer.

The events bookending this movie are true, but the actual story is pure speculation...thus leaving the door wide open for the storytelling.

Communist Catholics are an oddity...the contradictions in that appellation alone are manifest. So what we have here is told somewhat in the manner of a Passion Play, cross-pollinated with a critique vs. defense of the Marx-Hegel "Holy Family"...the argument centers on the captive's immediate concern about execution, whereas the captors insist on demonstrating they are merciless.

The problem is, all of this seems to be going on as if there's no outside world of concern...oh, we get leakage in from TV and newspapers, but no sense that Rome is under lockdown. This ends up totally alienated from the central symbolism (Mora's body having been found precisely halfway between the respective Christian Democrats' and Italian Communist Party's headquarters). We're locked behind the writing (the stacks of books, and simultaneously, Chiara within the library), then left for dead with no spatial, political or symbolic context.

That said, there is some cleverness in the limitation placed on Chiara, who is the only one who can tell the story outside the apartment, but has a proximity barrier from the writer at the cubicle door and peephole. Upon reaching perigee, she is reduced to defiant tears. Note also how she dreams in Soviet-era propaganda films!

This is a very good docu-drama about a kidnapping and assassination of a former Prime Minister Aldo Moro of Italy in 1978 by the Red Brigades. Pretty much the whole movie takes place in the hideout where they are keeping the politician, trying to negotiate a change in government and even getting the Pope involved. One of the most amazing things about the movie to me, outside of excellent story telling, is the use of Pink Floyd music. There's not too many movies that get the right to use PF music, but this movie does with "Shine on you crazy Diamond" and "The Great Gig in the Sky". Extremely powerful music to establish tone and mood in the movie, and very effective. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, and the DVD documentary extra is very good too. It gives a great background to the true story, and a good profile of the filmmaker.