LAMERICA Movie Review

Two Italian carpetbaggers (Enrico Lo Verso and Michele Placido) head for poverty-stricken Albania in 1991, the first year after the collapse of the communist dictatorship. Hoping to bleed money out of the instability and general chaos that the country has fallen into, the men attempt to set up a phony corporation with the goal of scamming government grant money, but they need an Albanian national as a figurehead and puppet to pose as chief of their “corporation.” They settle on a simple-minded old man (Carmelo Di Mazzarelli) who's spent much of his life in prison camps, and they place him in yet another prison—this time an orphanage—for safekeeping. When the old man escapes, one of the con artists (Lo Verso) goes looking for him, and his search turns into a voyage of discovery that becomes unexpectedly personal, political, and, ultimately, philosophical. This extraordinary and heartbreaking film from director Gianni Amelio is a large-scale, spectacular portrait of humanity in upheaval, yet within it beats the heart of an intimate, tightly focused, neo-realist master-work on the order of The Bicycle Thief or Open City. Amelio has long been carrying on the tradition of neo-realism in films like Open Doors and The Stolen Children, but with Lamerica (the title's full meaning and impact is best discovered while watching the film) his directorial powers have clearly reached the level of a master. Amelio has taken a complex situation—both politically and emotionally—and has clarified it, rather than simplified it, allowing us to see our own lives within this magnificent, sweeping portrait of the human condition. One of the great films of the 1990s. (See it letterboxed to appreciate its remarkable visual power.)

NEXT STOP … The Stolen Children, The Tree of Wooden Clogs, Paisan

1995 116m/C IT Enrico Lo Verso, Michele Placido, Carmelo Di Mazzarelli, Piro Milkani; D: Gianni Amelio; W: Gianni Amelio, Andrea Porporati, Alessandro Sermoneta; C: Luca Bigazzi; M: Franco Piersanti. Nominations: Independent Spirit Awards '97: Best Foreign Film. VHS, Letterbox NYF