Pope Benedict XVI resigned today, and the film Habemus Papam [We have a Pope] by Nanni Moretti immediately came to mind. Habemus Papam is a farce about the human limits of a holy man, who succumbs to the dilemma: to be or not to be Pope? The film screened at the 2011 Cannes Festival, to mixed reactions. Fact and fiction don’t seem so far apart. What other movies have predicted the future?
Resources:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/may/13/cannes-2011-review-habemus-papam
I was introduced to Nanni Moretti as a kid in Rome, Italy. My history teacher at the “Alfieri” middle school was the austere Mrs. Barbieri, Moretti’s aunt. She spoke a few times in passing about her teenage nephew Nanni and his attempts at making a super8 feature film. History proved her right: today, Nanni Moretti’s early pictures stand as masterful low budget debuts. Films made by young filmmakers about the pains of being young people are still not common today, despite the lower costs of digital film.
You can see some clips here (Italian only)
“Io sono un autarchico” 1977 (“I am Self-Sufficient”)
“Ecce Bombo” 1978 (…)
Both films have vision, personality and an in-your-face – uncompromising desire to mix open wounds and a pinch of salt. Moretti cracked a small opening in the italian film traditions. He appeared on scene and never left, without dominating it, but with an impossible-to-ignore brutally honest take on paradoxes and contradictions of human nature: a dark self-criticism blended with utopian optimism about politics, love and family. Every Nanni Moretti film is an unsentimental drop into the bloody battleground of hypocrisy we call “middle-class life”.