Matteo Garrone’s “Gomorrah” opens February 13, 2009 via IFC Films but there’s no specific date yet for the film, according to publicists for the movie. Martin Scorsese is a big fan of the Italian mafia, multi-vignette laden drama. We saw it at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this year. The Italian mob is so pissed off about the incisive and revealing non-fiction novel that this film is based on, they want the writer, Roberto Saviano, as dead as Dillinger. Dude travels with armed protection wherever he goes. We liked the gripping film, but as Hollywood Elsewhere writes it’s “unemotional and docu-drama-like” and that was one of our problems with it.
“Gomorrah,” is definitely going to be one of the front-runners in the Best Oscar Foreign picture race, a category we’re slightly annoyed with since certain excellent pictures weren’t chosen to represent their respective countries or were disqualified for whatever strange AMPAS production technicalities. Why didn’t Argentina pick, “The Headless Woman,” why didn’t Japan pick, “Tokyo Sonata”? It’s practically a crime that Mexico overlooked “Silent Light,” but since 95% of it isn’t in Spanish, we suppose we can at least understand the politics there.