re:mote voices

Title: Now Or Never[Ora O Mai Più ]
Cast: Jacopo Bonvicini, Violante Placido, Edoardo Gabbriellini, Elio Germano, Camilla Filippi, Riccardo Scamarcio, Francesco Mandelli
Director: Lucio Pellegrini

Now Or Never is the first film in this years Italian film festival that I have caught, an annual event which normally has a couple of decent films that are well worth catching. Over the years I’ve caught a number of films in these festivals, many of which have had political undertones, covering the kinds of struggles with fascism and protest that have come up in the Italian political history, though none more so than this one.

David is in the final year of his four-year course; one exam to go and he is finished. Having spent the last four years with his head down he is pretty much unaware of anything other than his physics degree from the prestigious university in Pisa. However on the day of that last exam a pretty girl hands him a flyer for a protest group. And so events turn him around, following that girl to a meeting he finds himself embraced/embracing the politics of dissent - a group building towards the protests against globalisation at Genoa. Along the way we have a love story of some kind, where there is the will he won't he with Viola, balanced off by the growing friendship with her boyfriend Luca. So that when she throws herself at him at one point he really doesn't know how to respond.

Throughout the back and forth of the relationship aspects of the narrative David is becoming increasingly involved in the politics of his new friends. Helping them out with speeches, press releases and the like. There is an increasingly jubilant and enthusiastic atmosphere amongst the group, but there is also a mirrored hostility from the authorities. All of this builds to the events at Genoa, where protesters were attacked by the police, resulting in the death of Carlo Giuliani. Within the context of the film the protests and resulting riots are not shown. Instead we get a more abstract view of the protest, one which shows how trains and buses have been cancelled, where the police are stopping and detaining people who are on the way to the city. Instead of riots we have the confusion of detention centres, which became known as death camps. Here the film is particularly brutal, lengthy scenes of police torturing protestors, techniques mirroring documentaries about methods used against the SAS to see if they are tough enough. From the mental torture of forcing people to stand in certain positions for lengths of time, to the actual beating of those who have been detained – police lined on either side of narrow corridors thrashing people with sticks. Unsurprisingly this is quite brutal material, and quickly changes the feel of the film, these scenes are stark, disturbing and memorable.

One of the interesting things about Now Or Never being part of the film festival is that one of the screenwriters was present to take part in a discussion after the film. Having been involved in the protest movement and having been at Genoa himself, he originally wrote the screenplay based on his experiences to some degree. As the process of making a film is followed through the writing is worked on by the director and another screenwriter. This led to some disagreements through the process, for instance the inclusion of the leaning tower of Pisa, the original writer being from Pisa really didn’t want the tower to be included at all, while the studio did – of course the fact that they then had to pay to use the tower in the film didn’t help matters either. Another point of disagreement was the ending, which after the strength of the detention camps comes as a sort of meandering and ambiguous conclusion. One which the screenwriter wasn’t happy with, feeling that he had been over ruled for what was allegedly a “happy ending”, though it came across as weak and inappropriate. The discussion ends with the screenwriter’s idea that they have an “obligation to be optimistic”.