Paolo & Vittorio Taviani | 74 mins | streaming | 1.85:1 | Italy / Italian | 12
On the surface, this is a documentary about the inmates of Rome’s high-security Rebibbia prison — many of them with mafia connections — putting on a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. However, it becomes clear fairly quickly that it’s all been staged, which is only more apparent when you learn some behind-the-scenes details (at least one prisoner had been released years earlier and returned to participate in this project).
The question becomes: is that a problem? Because while it isn’t a documentary, it also is a documentary. These are real prisoners putting on a real performance, as they do every year (indeed, it was a previous production that inspired this film’s existence). Even if what we’re watching isn’t literal documentary footage, it’s surely been inspired by real experiences and conflicts, then re-worked into movie form. So it blurs the line between fact and fiction, which is also thematically appropriate: these criminals, some of them murderers, are now playing the parts of murderers in a fiction, and seeing reflections of their own lives in Shakespeare’s centuries-old text.
I don’t know if this gives us any particular insight into the minds of mobsters, or if the mobsters’ experiences bring a new perspective to Shakespeare, but it seems clear that being involved in the project has given new insight and perspective to the prisoners’ lives. For us as viewers, perhaps that suggestion about the power of art to improve anyone’s life — or to provide an escape or solace when in grim situations — is illumination enough.
100Films.co.uk 