Mediterraneo: A Film With Fuzzy Logic At Its Core, 13 July 2005

Author: mibabur


Mediterraneo is a treat to watch. A feast not limited to the eyes, somehow it reminds me of another cinematic feast namely "Babette's Feast". The two movies have, in my opinion, much the same chemistry, though altogether different physics. Maybe because both these of them can boast one the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Mediterraneo is replete with life and beauty. It is blessed with the rhythm of an enthralling sea, the almost ripple-free life of a village like town, the heat of day and the quiet of night. And above all this is house-full of noises, noises made by people, young people, at war and in love.

What really touched me about this film was the fact that every body eventually gets what he yearned for and missed. The letter-writer does get a chance to escape. The Captain busies himself in decorating the local church. Lorusso is happy with his extrovert style of life. And so is Farina, only he is introvert. Other men too find themselves means for partial comfort if not full satisfiaction. Even the followers of Saint Balthasar make their own contribution towards fun, chaos and misery that other more self-important members of this no-mission task force are going through.

It is fantastic to see how these tense woe-befallen war-laden become gradually satisfied with themselves and at ease with their surroundings. Whom, other than themselves were they ever at war with?

Yet again, it is wonderful to watch them both anxious and worried simultaneously, at the very prospect of retuning to "peace and quiet" of home, i.e., when the man in the helicopter brings the news of lost causes and changed times.

A new world order awaits them on the other shore, to which they are later obliged to migrate, only to suffer ridicule, confusion and disillusionment.

Only one man stays behind. Antonio Farina, who with his humble beginnings and meager infatuations showed no promise at all in the outset, yet in the long run, emerges as the most powerful, most memorable character of them all. From homeland`s point of view, he is a run-away. From island's point of view he is the loyal one, the one who stayed. Madly in love with the ex-prostitute of town, he goes great lengths in order to remain. Entrenched in his hidden fortress, an olive-barrel to others, for one spare moment he resembles the Baron-in-the-trees, one of Italo Calvino's heroes in the author`s masterpiece triology "Our Ancestors".

All this and much else happens happens during the short course of this film. And yet there always is this almost magical aura of nothing happening at all, alongside a sense of foreboding. One cannot help wondering if what is happening is real. and even though it may be, if it can is going to prevail if something wicked coming this way.

But there is more to this movie than what first meets the eye.

With its simplicity aimed at nothing in particular, "Mediterraneo" manages to achieve more than many films laden with heavy messages. The film raises difficult questions in an easy manner, more like a curious youth rather than an adult raging with anger. Like the see itself, it knows a deep lot which it lets us steal a glimpse of only to fathom at what wonders and monsters lie beneath surface.

The film becomes all the more effective in spite of and due to its fuzziness. "Mediterrraneo" blurs the boundaries of war and peace, plays with the concepts of comradeship and loyalty, blends "us" with "them", reveals "certains" to be mere perhaps, compares being to nothingness. This film has the magic to transcend space and time. It has fuzzy logic at the core of its magical wand.

Memorabilia:

Barbecue party, where they merrily eat their enemy: chicken shot to kill in one-sided combat.

Recitations of Greek poetry in the heat of the night.

Surprise! To discover behind curtain of white sheets, a whole town, alive and kicking. They find their Oz without ever going over rainbow.

The local whore files complaint for being out of job.

Wedding ceremony held in the local church, renovated by the invaders.

With utmost solemnity, Lorusso's "bodyguard" declares his eternal love for none other than Lorusso himself.

The Finale: Three ex-compatriots sitting around a table in Farina's hotel. Their peeling and cutting vegetables in harmony is reminiscent of their polishing and mending their guns together in an inglorious past, not so far away.