Gomorra

I just got home from the Odeon cinema in Shaftesbury Avenue. My Italian colleague L. invited us to go and watch with him: Gomorra, according to some the best Mafia film since City of God.

L. approved the film and was happy because "it was a film that portrayed the Italian mafia as what they really are: a gang of camorristas".

There are three main groups of mafia in Italy: the Sicilian Mafia, the Napolitan Camorra and the Calabresi Ndrangueta. The fist one is the most popular because it extended its influence to the US and because of the Godfather film.

Gomorra is a film about the Napolitan Camorra, based on the book by Roberto Saviano. I think that the writer may have included himself in the book through the character Roberto, a simple guy who shakes his head and decides that such harming world is not for him.

Asked how Italy can solve this problem, L. reluctantly says that the first necessary move should be to oust one specific person from power: Silvio Berlusconi. Trying to dig further I reply that Italy did it once but the following government barely lasted one year because it was unstably supported by too many different parties. He shakes his head and says that every move by that government was booed on TV by all the stations under Berlusconi's control. Our directions in the Tube diverged and we postponed the rest of the conversation for the next time.

For various personal reasons I am interested in Italy so it will feature in more of my future posts. Now it's time to go to bed.

Love and freedom.