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Arthur J Pais September 24, 2003 12:40 IST
Good Morning, Night: A brilliant, heartfelt and controversial film dealing with murderous radicalism. Writer-director Marco Bellocchio restages one of the most notorious episodes in Italian political history that many people in that country do not want to discuss: the 1978 kidnapping of President Aldo Moro (Roberto Herlitzka) by a cell of the Red Brigade terrorist group.
The haunting images of the only female member of the terrorist band, Anna (Maya Sansa), whose revolutionary conscience is pricked by human considerations, are unforgettable. She finds herself increasingly alienated from her militant comrades, and begins thinking of a way to turn their prisoner free.
Bellocchio stages thoughtful and troubling meetings between the radicals and Moro who tries to convey his Catholic philosophy to them. But it is Anna, the young idealist, who forges a silent bond with the doomed man.
Directed without sensationalism and narrated with underplayed performances, the dazzlingly conveyed film was one of the most gripping films seen at the TIFF. It was one of the very few films to receive spontaneous applause in Toronto.
