Everyone's a (movie) critic

Everyone's a movie critic, including me.

If you want to see more of my stuff (I can't really call them reviews) on movies, you can go to the Netflix site (only if you're a member). Hmmm. How to access my posts? OK, go to what is probably my best-received critique, on Nanni Moretti's Caro Diario. It should be among the first user reviews, under Smiling Eggplant (doh!). From there, you can find the others by clicking on see "smiling eggplant's other reviews."

There are about fifty posts, as of this writing. Not all are about Italian-related films, but many are. Including my trashing of Pasolini's Teorema, and various other reviews about him (squinting, in photo). Usually more positive.

Di Pietro apologizes for Berlusconi

Antonio Di Pietro is an Italian politician and former cop and prosecutor. He became famous in the early '90's for his primary role in the Clean Hands investigations in which, with outstanding courage and integrity, he took on the widespread corruption in his country.

And now, from the pages of the British left-of-center daily The Guardian, comes an article of his in which he apologizes for Berlusconi. He gives a good, succinct account of Berlusconi's wrongdoing, all of it accurate.

But. I've always strongly believed that you cannot and should not apologize for someone else. Not only that; those who do so strike me as advertising their own superiority. And my point here with respect to Berlusconi is that the average Italian is not morally superior to him. Many Italians think they are, for two reasons. One: denial and lack of insight into their own behavior- there is no Italian word for the English "insight." Two: the average person (not only in Italy) often doesn't do the dirt of the very rich and powerful because they don't have the means, but they manage plenty of injustice on a smaller scale, often quite damaging.

The comments section of online publications is quickly becoming an integral part of such publications (except for this one). One of the commenters exonerates Italians by saying that Berlusconi diabolically shaped Italians over the years with his control of the media, creating a monster-public that was ripe to be manipulated. I've heard that one before. No, no. Another of my strong beliefs is that adults are ipso facto responsible for their behavior. No blaming your momma, your poppa, Society, or Silvio Berlusconi. This is also simply not correct in the case of Italy. Director and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini famously was analyzing the degraded social condition of Italy in the early '70's, before Berlusconi's admittedly vast influence.

And what would be a realistic basis of comparison? Before his control of the country, the Italians had decades of a near-monopoly by the deplorable Christian Democrats ("Christian" "Democrats"). And before that twenty years of Benito Mussolini. Objectively speaking, Berlusconi is an improvement over both.

Pasolini and diversity, real diversity

"L'ansia del consumo è un'ansia di obbedienza a un ordine non pronunciato. Ognuno in Italia sente l'ansia, degradante, di essere uguale agli altri nel consumare, nell'essere felice, nell'essere libero: perché questo è l'ordine che egli inconsciamente ha ricevuto, e a cui deve obbedire, a patto di sentirsi 'diverso'. Mai la diversità è stata una colpa così spaventosa come in questo periodo di tolleranza. L'uguaglianza non è stata infatti conquistata, ma è una falsa uguaglianza ricevuta in regalo."

The anxiety to consume is an anxiety to obey an unspoken order. Everyone in Italy feels the degrading anxiety to be equal to others in consuming, in being happy, in being free: because this is the order he has unconsciously received, and which he must obey, to avoid feeling "different." Never has being different been such an appalling crime as it is now, in this time of tolerance. Equality has in fact not been won; what there is instead is false equality, granted, as a gift.

Pier Paolo Pasolini, from Scritti Corsari (1975)