HAPPY AS LAZZARO
****
Director: Alice Rohrwacher
Screenwriter: Alice Rohrwacher
Principal cast:
Adriano Tardiolo
Luca Chikovani
Tommaso Ragno
Alba Rohrwacher
Nicoletta Braschi
Sergi López
Country: Italy/Switzerland/France/Germany
Classification: M
Runtime: 128 mins.
Australian release date: 6 June 2019
Previewed at: Palace Central, Sydney, on 15 May 2019.
Happy As Lazzaro, directed and written by Alice Rohrwacher, won the Best Screenplay award at Cannes in 2018. It is a beautiful, rather sombre fable that delivers a message about the propensity of human beings to subjugate each other and how easily individuals can be manipulated when they are kept in the dark. It’s also about goodness and innocence, and how confronting it is when people meet someone who is truly ‘good’. Partly shot in the magnificent Lazio region of Italy, the story concentrates on a colony of people sharecropping on a tobacco farming estate called Inviolata, owned by a marquise who exploits her workers by paying them wages that are so low they are never out of debt, making them indentured to her. She can do this because the workers are isolated in a region that has been cut off from the rest of the country by floods. It is based on a true story that took place in Italy - in 1982 the law surrounding the remaining sharecropping agreements still in operation was changed and those arrangements were converted into leases or paid labour but one particular landowner refused to pass this information on to her labourers, thus keeping them in semi-servile conditions and continuing to exploit them for many more years
A beatifically simple young man, Lazzaro (Adriano Tardiolo, magnificent in his first acting role), is a general dogsbody at everybody’s beck and call in Inviolata, always wearing the same impassive expression, unruffled by their demands. One day he meets the Marquise de Luna’s (Nicoletta Braschi) son, Tancredi (Georgian-born Luca Chikovani), who tells him that they could be half-brothers and enlists his help in faking his kidnapping. He encourages Lazzaro to hide him up in the hills in a secret spot that Lazzaro retreats to when he wants to be alone. When the police fly in by helicopter to investigate the young marquis’ disappearance, they discover the true situation behind the ‘queen of cigarettes’’ operation. Around this time Lazzaro falls down a cliff and, when he awakes, returns to the estate only to find that his fellow workers have all left. He heads off to the city to try and find them and meets the now adult Antonia (Alba Rohrwacher, the director’s sister), who falls at his feet in supplication; it seems that many years have passed yet Lazzaro is unchanged physically. When he finally encounters Tancredi (now played by Tommaso Ragno), who has lost the family fortune, the harsh reality of life and its complexities overwhelms him, and he sets out to make amends.
Loosely based on a legend about St. Francis, this is a moving, finely crafted parable. It also references the ancient idea of the ‘holy fool’, which can be found in Western and Eastern Christianity, Islam (e.g. Nasreddin) and Indian mysticism (a similar character can be found in Hal Ashby’s 1979 movie Being There in Peter Seller’s role as Chance, the gardener). Tardiolo impresses as the young man whose purity is mistaken for stupidity simply because no one can recognise his total lack of guile. The amateur actor is finishing his studies at university before deciding whether to act again but, based on his performance here, he’d be a loss to cinema if he were to take up a career in economics. The film is beautifully framed by French cinematographer Hélène Louvart, and is accompanied by an eclectic soundtrack that includes a J. S. Bach composition, an aria from Bellini’s Norma, and ‘90s disco track Dreams (Will Come Alive) by 2 Brothers On The 4th Floor.
Happy As Lazzaro director Rohrwacher, when discussing the character of Lazzaro, explained that “… I don’t believe sanctity is charisma. I believe instead that if a saint were to appear today with his unsustainable call for another way of existing, if he were to appear in our modern lives, perhaps we wouldn’t even recognise him or perhaps we would rid ourselves of him without a second thought.” It’s a disconcerting thought. This dreamlike, modern fable of a film will provide you with food for thought for days after you’ve left the cinema.
Screenwriter: Alice Rohrwacher
Principal cast:
Adriano Tardiolo
Luca Chikovani
Tommaso Ragno
Alba Rohrwacher
Nicoletta Braschi
Sergi López
Country: Italy/Switzerland/France/Germany
Classification: M
Runtime: 128 mins.
Australian release date: 6 June 2019
Previewed at: Palace Central, Sydney, on 15 May 2019.
Happy As Lazzaro, directed and written by Alice Rohrwacher, won the Best Screenplay award at Cannes in 2018. It is a beautiful, rather sombre fable that delivers a message about the propensity of human beings to subjugate each other and how easily individuals can be manipulated when they are kept in the dark. It’s also about goodness and innocence, and how confronting it is when people meet someone who is truly ‘good’. Partly shot in the magnificent Lazio region of Italy, the story concentrates on a colony of people sharecropping on a tobacco farming estate called Inviolata, owned by a marquise who exploits her workers by paying them wages that are so low they are never out of debt, making them indentured to her. She can do this because the workers are isolated in a region that has been cut off from the rest of the country by floods. It is based on a true story that took place in Italy - in 1982 the law surrounding the remaining sharecropping agreements still in operation was changed and those arrangements were converted into leases or paid labour but one particular landowner refused to pass this information on to her labourers, thus keeping them in semi-servile conditions and continuing to exploit them for many more years
A beatifically simple young man, Lazzaro (Adriano Tardiolo, magnificent in his first acting role), is a general dogsbody at everybody’s beck and call in Inviolata, always wearing the same impassive expression, unruffled by their demands. One day he meets the Marquise de Luna’s (Nicoletta Braschi) son, Tancredi (Georgian-born Luca Chikovani), who tells him that they could be half-brothers and enlists his help in faking his kidnapping. He encourages Lazzaro to hide him up in the hills in a secret spot that Lazzaro retreats to when he wants to be alone. When the police fly in by helicopter to investigate the young marquis’ disappearance, they discover the true situation behind the ‘queen of cigarettes’’ operation. Around this time Lazzaro falls down a cliff and, when he awakes, returns to the estate only to find that his fellow workers have all left. He heads off to the city to try and find them and meets the now adult Antonia (Alba Rohrwacher, the director’s sister), who falls at his feet in supplication; it seems that many years have passed yet Lazzaro is unchanged physically. When he finally encounters Tancredi (now played by Tommaso Ragno), who has lost the family fortune, the harsh reality of life and its complexities overwhelms him, and he sets out to make amends.
Loosely based on a legend about St. Francis, this is a moving, finely crafted parable. It also references the ancient idea of the ‘holy fool’, which can be found in Western and Eastern Christianity, Islam (e.g. Nasreddin) and Indian mysticism (a similar character can be found in Hal Ashby’s 1979 movie Being There in Peter Seller’s role as Chance, the gardener). Tardiolo impresses as the young man whose purity is mistaken for stupidity simply because no one can recognise his total lack of guile. The amateur actor is finishing his studies at university before deciding whether to act again but, based on his performance here, he’d be a loss to cinema if he were to take up a career in economics. The film is beautifully framed by French cinematographer Hélène Louvart, and is accompanied by an eclectic soundtrack that includes a J. S. Bach composition, an aria from Bellini’s Norma, and ‘90s disco track Dreams (Will Come Alive) by 2 Brothers On The 4th Floor.
Happy As Lazzaro director Rohrwacher, when discussing the character of Lazzaro, explained that “… I don’t believe sanctity is charisma. I believe instead that if a saint were to appear today with his unsustainable call for another way of existing, if he were to appear in our modern lives, perhaps we wouldn’t even recognise him or perhaps we would rid ourselves of him without a second thought.” It’s a disconcerting thought. This dreamlike, modern fable of a film will provide you with food for thought for days after you’ve left the cinema.