It’s rare to find a comedy at a film festival. Only drums and Ingolad voices seem to fit. Therefore, when they arrive, they enter alone. They are a breath of fresh air amidst so much tragedy. If the laughter is accompanied by something else, a world view, a political critique, or just plain honest emotion, the experience becomes cathartic and liberating. Let them tell Ruben Östlund, who last year with his satire El triángulo de la tristeza, caused laughter in the room before taking the second Palme d’Or, which, a priori, seemed more rewarding. Perhaps Östlund will tie the knot and put another director on the winning list who chose comedy to address the issues that troubled him in the first place.
It is the Italian Nani Moretti, who returns to his car painters a la Caro Diario El sol del futuro, a film that is so enjoyable to watch, that evokes such beautiful emotions, from laughter to tears, while passing through tenderness that is impossible. Not to connect and want to be part of the group that the director created with his closest collaborators, such as Margherita Bai or Silvio Orlando. Moretti stars and plays himself, a 70-year-old director trying to build a dream project, a story about the Italian Communist Party in the 50s, when a Hungarian circus arrives just in 1956, when his country revolts against Stalin’s barbarians.
We owe him some of the funniest moments as arrows to his country’s domesticated leftists, such as “Say something left, D’Alema, say one left” from April, which became a criticism meme. All parties that betray progressive politics at the first opportunity. Moretti shows that highly political cinema can be made from many places, as well as laughter and love. Here, Moretti – who never hesitated to call himself a communist – points to a key moment when he believed that communism should break with the Soviet Union, but did not reject its ideals and policies. To develop an alternative that would allow them to move forward.
The sun of the future, as we have already seen several times in Cannes, is a movie in a cinema, but here both stories are combined thanks to the fact that everything always happens at the level of fantasy, the unbelievable. The scenes do not belong to the code of realism, but to Moretti’s imagination, and we go in there to enjoy a film that reflects the ideals of the left and ends with a communist utopia in one of the best scenes ever seen in Cannes. . Moretti’s fiction rewrites history because that’s what movies are meant to do, offering a Communist march through the streets of Rome, which in addition – and without an interesting wink that will make Italian cinema lovers cry – is an overview of his entire filmography. nicely Moretti is faithful to his principles, to the forms of cinema and to the audience.
If it already works as a political fantasy, add that it’s also a musical fantasy, with Italian songs, the Blues Brothers and, of course, Franco Battiato. Only Moretti already has enough background to allow himself to stop the stage so that the whole chorus can dance the Voglio Vederti Danzare twirling like an Italian singer. A scene that is a veritable nail biter of pure happiness. A gesture that Nani Moretti’s entire team repeated on the red carpet – it came in the last second of the film – in one of the great moments of Cannes 2023, where the level of the official department remains remarkable.
Cannes also demonstrated what has become intuitive in recent years, that a generation of directors, those who have promoted auteur cinema for decades, care about the future of their profession. The future they see marked by an algorithm that says when the film should take its first turn, that says the language it should have, that creates manufactured films with the same aesthetic, without personality or soul. Moretti says enough. His character, being him, flatly refuses to do so. He would rather sacrifice his film than prostitute himself. Recall that Moretti meets with Netflix to save it and listens to the opinions of the young and modern team about their film, which will be “seen in 190 countries”. Moretti prefers that they see him at 30 or five, but see the film that he really had inside.
Future Sun is also a message for the new generation of filmmakers. It’s not just what you say, but how you say it that matters. It’s not that there is violence, it’s how you show it. Liability of aircraft. A moral responsibility to society that makes you think about where the camera is placed and how it moves. This is made clear by a brilliant sequence where Moretti stops filming to analyze how the death of a young and promising filmmaker will be recorded on set. A discussion in which Renzo Piano appears and even Scorsese is mentioned and where the young man utters empty words and clichés while Moretti tries to explain what it means to shoot the scene as it is. A refreshing, beautiful film that envelops you and leaves you wanting to dance with Batiato, turn around and wave the communist flag and believe that anything is possible.
Source: El Diario
