Gomorra

Tonight I watched an amazing film called Gomorrah, about the Camorra of southern Italy. It's understated, real and has a beauty to it. The film's based on a book of the same name written by Roberto Saviano, an intensely streetwise and intelligent man. The interview with him in the extras is well worth a listen. His description (translated from the Italian) of what drives teenagers to murder is uncomfortably familiar:

On the one hand, it [murder] makes you feel like a man, macho. On the other hand, it feels like you are climbing the social ladder. This aspect is less understood by people who do not live that reality. When these kids approached the clans, during and after the feud - I had the chance to see it happen during the feud - they didn't really want to get rich. Nor did they want to become killers. They only wanted to be cool. They only wanted to show off. They wanted girls to turn around as they were passing on the street, saying, "See who that was?" Then it doesn't matter if you look like a loser, if you are one of those boys with a horrible grey line under your nose, you know, the first teenage moustaches. You may be an ugly teenager, but if you are part of the system, they will fear you and therefore respect you. And therefore desire you.

Here he speaks about what it is like to be born into this society:

The Camorra brands you forever with the idea that ethics is just a loser's excuse. If you say that you are a nobody because your hands are clean, or that you didn't achieve a certain position because you refused to compromise, the Camorrista will look at you and say, "You didn't make it. That's all." To say that something wasn't right is not seen as a choice, but as an excuse. If you want something, you take it and that's it. If you can't, it means you are a loser. There are no other ways to see this.

And finally, his reflections on (the perversion of) the entrepreneurial spirit:

Every boss is obsessed with cinema, not only in Naples, but I think also in Calabria, Sicily, the US and Nigeria. Very rarely does cinema look at crime. But it is very true that criminals watch films a lot. The most loved character is still Tony Montana. Tony loses everything. That's exactly the aim, as paradoxical as it sounds while I'm saying it, of every true man of power. He will grab the world and everything in it. Yet, he knows that he will have to lose everthing to pay for this choice. He'll lose his life, his family, love, everything. If you are not prepared to lose it all, you're a manager. Be a normal businessman. Where I'm from, they say, "You're rich without risk", meaning you're worthless. If power comes after your wife, your mistress, your children, your house, your holidays . . . no way you'll never be able, as Cutolo would say, to decide on other peoples' life and death.

This is the path that some men climb, and for very human motives.