A voluptuous woman stands in a long line, outstanding in her beauty, with her nipples rigid against the thin dress she is wearing. A fancy, black car stops and calls the woman by her name: Patrizia. She looks intently into the car to the man dressed in tuxedo. She does not know him but he convinces her they know each other. He is San Gennaro, the patron saint of Naples who assures the woman she will have a child. Patrizia goes into the car and is brought into this huge house, dramatically decrepit, the kind of space that seems fit for orgies and masquerade balls. Then the Little Monk appears. San Gennaro instructs Patrizia to bend over and kiss the dwarfish figure. San Gennaro smacks Patrizia’s rump.
Patrizia comes home late to a husband who accuses her of having sex somewhere. He calls her a slut, a whore and beats her. Her cousins arrive with Patrizia splayed in bed, her generous bosom in full display. Thus begins the fond memory of Fabietto and his youth. Thus begins our incursion into cinematic cinema.
It is the ’80s in Naples and the buzz is about the arrival of the Diego Maradona, the soccer star from Argentina. Maradona is not simply coming to that region; he is invited to lead the soccer team that will represent Naples in a country that is mad about soccer.
Will Maradona agree to play for Naples? Will the Neapolitans have the money to pay for the sports superstar?
No matter, life in the home of the Schisa, the family to which Fabietto belongs, continues. Or, maybe continue is not the proper word; maybe “percolate” is the apt one. In the house, Fabietto’s parents are so in love with each other that when they discover something about the father, the world is turned upside down. Fabietto is bored with life and he lives it with such ordinariness in contrast to his kin who all appear extraordinary in appearances and character.
As in many depictions of the Italian family, the filial gatherings are huge, the amity is grand, and the conflict is even more grandiose. We take all this for granted until the day arrives when Fabietto’s brother auditions for no less than Federico Fellini. This triggers a shock of recognition: we are already with characters who would have made it to the truths and circuses of the master filmmaker himself!
If Fellini has his Amarcord and other filmic remembrances, then this must be the director’s—Paolo Sorrentino—own cache of raw ruminations.
Or, this could be meta-tribute to cinema.
A filmmaker comes to Naples and Fabietto, whose interest is philosophy, is seduced by filmmaking. He follows the director who is repulsive to the young boy as the former harangues the latter as to the contradictions of cinema and realities. His mission is not to convert a prospective disciple. And yet, the long speeches about films and imaginations are delivered by the filmmaker inside an underground water system or before he dips into the water of Naples—scenarios recalling the oracular or the point before the hero embarks on an epic journey. This is the conceit of the film, as it winks at us or smiles at the sky because somewhere, the lesson is being told by the magically duplicitous human capacity to remember and to forget.
In between bouts of insanity of the glorious Aunt Patrizia and the moments of madness of the clan members is the arrival of the hero, Maradona, at the expense of the Neapolitan wealth. This finalizes the destiny of our young man. He opts not to join his parents going on vacation because from his father he receives a ticket to that soccer game where the skills of Maradona brought upon him the title “the hand of God”. That game would also allow Fabietto to live on and leave for Rome to discover his power not with life, but with the other life—cinema.
The Italian title of the film is a giveaway of the odyssey of our man. It reads “E stata la mano di Dio”, which translates to “It was the hand of God”. That title and the blessing it hides behind the wounded resignation to fate are the very essence of Sorrentino’s film: it is a mosaic of contraptions and characters that do not seem to cohere but, in reality, is a paean to what fate is all about. Fate is a rambunctious festival of choices and chances, errors and trials captured by a film that magnifies how we are seduced by the unknown and reduced by daily life. God is there at the margin eager to be referenced.
The Hand of God competed for the Golden Lion at the 78th Venice International Film Festival. It won the Grand Jury Prize. Filippo Scotti, an angel at the cusp of his own sexuality, plays Fabietto. His performance earned him the Marcello Mastroianni Award, a prize given to outstanding performance of a newcomer in the Venice concourse. Luisa Ranieri, who plays Patrizia, is a spectacle, both as a bold beauty and an actor.
The film is written, produced and directed by Paolo Sorrentino. He directed The Great Beauty (La Grande Belleza) in 2013, which won the Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards.
The Hand of God is streaming on Netflix.