One of the Best Films I ever Saw
One film that explains so much
It’s called Il Traditore, on Netflix and the languages in it are Brazilian Portuguese, Italian and Sicilian dialect, and a smattering of English, so, even if you’re multilingual as I am, unless you’re Sicilian, subtitles will be required.
The film is based on the very much true story of Tommaso “Massino” Buscetta, who was a soldier in the Cosa Nostra (Mafia) who basically gave up some 366 mafiosi. In part, because Cosa Nostra had become the Mafia and the old rules were being ignored. Drugs introduced and no one was safe anymore. Romanticised as the “old mafia” is to a certain extent, it is also true to an extent, and the romanticisation in the film is absolutely not allowed to happen without a reality check from the Prosecuting Magistrate Giovanni Falcone. The extremely brave Judge who was killed in 1992 by the Mafia literally blowing up a whole section of road in order to get him. His friend Prosecuting Magistrate Paolo Borsellino was killed in similar fashion a few months later.
There are an immense level of good things in this film, some quite obvious, the actual story of Buscetta and the Mafia in general and how it mutated for the worst between the 1980s and 1990s (and since again and evolved into government pretty much, as in any case, it always had links to it). This part is very well done, because they even link and mention how Andreotti who was the Prime Minister of Italy seven times, was deeply implicated in the assassination of Carmine “Mino” Pecorelli, the editor of Osservatore Politico, who had revealed various scandals on Andreotti and also published a complete list of all the Freemasons, along with their code number and secret nickname that had thoroughly infiltrated the Catholic Church, and publicly asked the then “Pope” (an antipope like all the others since Roncalli) “John Paul I” Luciani if there would be silence or the deluge (punishment from God) for this absolutely huge infiltration of the Church. Luciani barely lasted a month, because despite being a fake Pope, he had started to dig into the messy and completely corrupt practices of the Vatican bank and its involvement with the Italian based Freemasonic Lodge P2 (this also was linked to “God’s Banker” Roberto Calvi later being hung under Blackfriars bridge in London in 1982.)
Luciani died of a “heart attack” 33 days after he became a fake Pope and no autopsy was ever done and he had been in good health previously. All indications is that he was murdered by some kind of poison most likely. These bits are not discussed in the film, but knowing about them makes the entire film, which is really more of a documentary in the sense that the key aspects are all factual, and the representation of the characters involved is artistically perfect.
So that is the baseline story, of how Cosa Nostra, which had some sort of rules, became the Mafia, whose only rule was violence in the name of profit and in which no one was deemed innocent, children, women and so-called “civilians” became targets merely due to being related to a mafioso and so on.
However, several other things are demonstrated with a clarity I have never seen before, in a quick list they are:
The individualism and uniqueness of Italians in general
The fact that each region and sometimes even each city (Corleone and Palermo are the two cities contending for power, both in Sicily) is a kind of “people” on its own. We have 21 dialects in Italy because we have 21 provinces and if you only speak the common Italian that is officially our language, you will barely understand any other of the dialects. And two “Italians” speaking their own dialect to each other when they are from different regions may as well be a German trying to understand a Spaniard.
Related to the above comes through a particular sense of honour, blood and soil that even if it is not politically correct to speak about, especially in the Anglo-sphere, is an absolute and undeniable fact. A Sicilian is and always will be only a Sicilian. A Venetian a Venetian, an Abruzzese an Abruzzese. And each one of us has a name and a history, and infamous or not, our ancestors, in our Catholic religion look down on us from above, or up at us from below, as the case may be. And you carry all of that and them and their and your name forward into the future you forge and the past that your children and their children will make stories from.
Even the legal system in Italy, and each interaction, is based much more on the human and the humanity of the individual. The criminal and the prosecutor, the policeman and the thief, they play their role, but they can also respect each other, even become friends. And above all, the scariest thing, the gold in each case, the rare thing, but the one everyone knows is really the important thing, is your dignity, your honour, your word, the type of man you are.
The vast majority of the mafiosi are the usual gang you find everywhere, be it the schoolyard, the jail yard, the organised crime family, the corporate world and so on. Hyenas and jackals. But now and then, there is a man in there that is a lion. Regardless of if anyone ever hears or finds out his name or not, there are Italians, that because of their principles, will die, or kill, without flinching. And this is done in a way and from a foundation that is radically different from the Anglo and Teutonic races. The Northerners as I think of them, may die for a general principle and be honourable men, as any man can be, but their way of getting there seems to me to be more abstract. The “Italian” (Sicilian/Venetian/Pugliese, etc) gets there for far more biologically intrinsic reasons. My family, my blood, my land, my good friend, maybe even my religion (Catholicism has no fear of death nor of killing when required. Only murder is strictly forbidden, and of course, this distinction is often abused by mafiosi).
On a grander scale, an intelligent observer can note the very different ways in which the human interactions take place in what was a nominally Catholic country, compared to a presently very much Protestant country. Yes, it’s true the Italians are more insular, less inserted in the mechanisation of the English-speaking world, because their personal humanity is still very much alive, very real and fresh and present; but it is also true they have a very well-developed imagination and sense of self, so that they can not only adapt to the Anglo-Saxon rules, but often find creative way of “overcoming” or “improving” them. If bureaucracy is a scourge of the devil, an Italian legislator intent on “improving” it is the right hand man of Satan. And if a bad law is in force, you can trust an Italian to find a loophole too. Catholicism (the real one, not the fake Vatican II Satanic version) is a religion that in all instances considers the human being in connection to God instead of a “system of society” as a Protestant false religion does. Because after all, as Jesus said, the Sabbath (laws) are made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Which paradoxically produces a far more just society than one in which every human being is supposed to fit in a special box that slots him in a specific place in the grand-machine that pulverises souls in the name of profit and “efficiency”.
If you have any interest in the human condition in both its good and bad aspects, I can’t think of a fit that better shows it and so clearly explains Italy and Italians as this one.
I hope you enjoy it.