Below the Clouds Review: Rosi’s Travelogue Triptych Visits Napoli

In Below the Clouds, Gianfranco Rosi turns his lens to Italy's Napoli region where Mount Vesuvius looms in a landscape rich with history. The post Below the Clouds Review: Rosi’s Travelogue Triptych Visits Napoli appeared first on POV Magazine.

Below the Clouds (Sotto le nuvole)
(Italy, 115 min.)
Dir. Gianfranco Rosi
Programme: TIFF Docs (International premiere)

Best known for his documentaries, Oscar nominated Italian-American filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi completes his cinematic tryptic about everyday life in Italy with the luxuriously meditative vérité film, Below the Clouds. This latest installment was recently awarded a Special Jury Price at the 82^nd Venice International Film Festival. It follows acclaimed predecessors, Sacro GRA, 2013’s Golden Lion winner, which focused on a ring road and the outskirts of Rome, and 2016’s Golden Bear winner and Oscar nominee Fire at Sea, which observed the Italian island of Lampedusa and the epicentre of the migration crisis.

Rosi’s latest film turns his lens towards southern Italy and an iconic peak. Located just nine kilometres east of Naples, Mount Vesuvius is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world. History is in constant danger of repeating itself in this densely populated region, and residents live with relentless anxiety as strong tremors commonly occur. As many viewers already know, Mount Vesuvius famously erupted in 79 AD, destroying the Roman city of Pompeii, among others. It has erupted numerous times since, with the last incidence occurring in March 1944.

Rosi nimbly crafts a vibrant and intricate homage to this region. Past and present not only co-exist but inform one another. In this observational documentary, it’s all in the camera work. Rosi, an accomplished cinematographer, possesses a keen eye and, to his credit, he freely indulges his love of his craft. His roving views of the countryside and cityscapes around the Mount provide the viewer with a fascinating insight into a place that exists between eras.

Although this documentary appears to have a free flowing, even meandering structure, Rosi is careful to assemble his film so that he can fold in the entirety of current Neapolitan existence. He skillfully mixes a variety of elements to fashion a richly layered effect. It observes the area’s history, preserved in local artifacts in museums and excavation efforts at Pompeii and surrounding sites, to evidence of ongoing (and unseen efforts) of tomb robbers whose greed works against these efforts.

The contradictions Rosi presents can be staggering at times as the beauty of the relics mixes with the vast emptiness of the cavernous, raided tombs. Vesuvius looks stunning in the landscape but as the filmmaker gets in closer, the steam that rises from its opening is both breathtaking and heart-stopping. Meanwhile, people on the street go about their business and don’t seem to mind the man filming them.

The residents are all too aware of the historical context of their lives. Rosi cleverly incorporates audio to deepen our sense of their unease. We watch individuals in fire and police emergency call centres respond to queries about tremors both real and imagined ones. The film follows these workers as they do their best to calm or help the callers. At times, we listen to those who are truly terrified, even people who are in danger at that very moment due to circumstances outside of their proximity to Vesuvius. At other times, we can chuckle at the callers who simply needed someone to complain to about neighbours. Rosi provides a rich portrait of the entirety of their experiences.

Although he focuses on one region, this filmmaker is smart enough to widen his focus within a global context. He includes the experiences of Syrian workers who dock in the port nearby to offload Ukrainian grain. Their realities also augment the lives of the inhabitants of the film: Rosi includes an attentive glimpse into their pasts and into their current situations as they worry about returning to Ukraine to load up more. In this way, the filmmaker presents the vital case that the war that is supposedly far away is now affecting everyone.

With his lingering shots of landscapes and faces, Rosi provides a haunting glimpse of life on the precipice. He creates a strong sense of this region in Italy as a liminal space. People are carrying on, living and breathing despite the presence of death. As the film engages with the moody atmosphere around the mount and within the city, there’s an enduring sense that past, present and future co-exist in any one instant. At times presenting a tapestry of messy emotions, Below the Clouds is a sublime mix of unease and quirk, a faithful representation of modern life with which anyone anywhere can identify.