164: The Night of the Shooting Stars

In my review of 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967; #166) I noted the need for a strong central character through which an audience vicariously lives for the duration of a film.  Here, after viewing the Taviani brothers’ The Night of Shooting Stars (1982), I feel I should also make the case for the ensemble-oriented central group of characters, which can serve an equally important purpose.  Single protagonists can be representative of individual struggle or serve a larger allegorical purpose concerning all of mankind.  Groups in films are usually more literal, but at the same time can be surrogates of actualities outside of the screen.  For example, the “replicants” of Blade Runner (also 1982) can be seen as embodying any number of groups of social outcasts. 

           

            In this film, the group in concern is comprised of the citizens of a rural Tuscan village held hostage by both the Nazis and the Fascists in the days before the American liberation.  These waning days of the war bring both antagonist groups to attempt final flexes of political power, eventually forcing a faction of the villagers to flee in the midst of night.  The 1001 text astutely notes that the film is primarily free of political statements, and rightly so.  For those we follow the war is no longer about politics, black shirts versus peasants, but about the struggle to find bread and tomatoes, to hang on with the hope that the end is near.

            The story’s primary narrator is a young girl, seemingly an odd choice for the film’s perspective until we realize that she has never known peace.  She has lived her life under Fascist and Nazi control, and yet, she smiles and laughs and finds joy in the world.  The war has been her life’s reality, but it has not suppressed her childlike belief in goodness.  Still it is clear the the violence has affected her, as daydreams reveal a morbid fascination.  As she recounts the story to her own young daughter years later, her viewpoint fades in and out, omnisciently shifting to elements she could not have known.  In other films this might be a flaw, but here it resonates with the perfect tone, as small intimate moments between the individual refugees create much of the picture’s charm.  Instances of lust, humor, childish innocence, and terror amongst the group are all intercut, as tension builds while they hide from the authorities.   

            When a confrontation with the fascists does finally occur, it’s clear that the true betrayal is not that of Mussolini against Italy, but of friend against friend.  This battle scene, shot in a field of waving wheat, is at the same time both real and haunting.  The combatants fire their weapons at first almost as if they are toys, realizing only when it is too late the ramifications of their actions.  When a dying fascist utters the Italian dictator’s name with his final breaths, it is clear that the political affairs no longer matter. 

            The film’s final scenes center on a romantic interlude between two lovers whose time passed them by long ago.  These moments are almost pitch-perfect in their portrayal of both shame and regret and serve as a memorable capstone to this piece.  The film is well shot and the art direction is fantastic, but there is also an intangible element of magnetism to these characters which makes the film shine.  We see them briefly, and it is often difficult to distinguish them from one another, but this is ultimately the point.  They could be the inhabitants of any village in any country infected by war.  They do what they must to survive, finding hope in the future and in one another. 

Grade: 2.5 Hats Off