Piazza Fontana (Romanzo di una Strage) (米蘭廣場大陰謀)

As its title Piazza Fontana (Romanzo di una Strage) (米蘭廣場大陰謀) by  Italian director Marco Tullio Giordana (my third film at the HKIFF) implies, it's a film about politics. On the 12th December, 1969, a bomb exploded inside Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura at the Piazza Fontana in Milan killing 7 and injuring 88. This sent shock waves across the whole of Italy. Anarchists, Maoist, Trotskyite Communists, socialists, neo-fascists, Christian democrats all called for an explanation of this terrible massacre of civilians. There was an urgent need to pacify the public outrage arising from this abominable tragedy and to nail the culprits. The Government had to act quickly and they quickly rounded up the usual suspects including a bright, outspoken anarchist who is against both the ultra left and the ultra right, Giuseppe Pinelli (Pierfrancesco Favino), the founding member of an anarchist chapter who is against all forms of physical violence. The Italian President at the time Giuseppe Saragat (Omero Antonutti) demanded that someone be made to sign a statement admitting to the terrible crime, by hook or by crook The Chief of Police of Milan, Luigi Calabresi (Valerio Mastendrea) was given this responsibility. During the last of 3 days of some grueling interrogations during which he had only 4 hours of sleep and was deprived of food but admitted to nothing, Pinelli was falsely told that one of his closest buddies had confessed, as the President suggested, to test his reactions. He refused to believe it. Shortly thereafter, when he asked for a break to take a cigarette and take some air at the first floor veranda, he jumped to his death. Nobody really knew why. The Government quickly announced it was a suicide and that his suicide was proof of his guilt and complicity in the bombing. This was the start of a long series of judicial proceedings, including an inquiry into the death of Pinelli initiated by Pinelli's widow (who was absolutely convinced that her husband had no part in the massacre) and public prosecutions against possible suspects at the end of which the police were founded not responsible for Pinelli's death and none of the accused, including anarchists and neo-fascists were found guilty. 

Giordana's film is the story of Calabresi personal investigation into the "truth" behind the "official evidence" about those incidents which form some of the darkest moments of contemporary Italian history, when the soul of Italy was torn apart between genuinely conflicting political ideals. Calabresi knew Pinelli personally and had deep respect for him as a person and felt genuinely sorry for his wife. In this film and he was not at all convinced that Pinelli was the kind who would be involved in planting that bomb nor that he was the kind to commit suicide. We follow him through the twists and turns of this quest for the ultimate truth in the course of which we are constantly surprised at the hidden connections between the clandestine political activities of Italian politicians at the highest level, their exploitation of the media through "informed" leaks, the intertwinings of the public activities of the anarchists and the secret machinations of neo-fascists: how the neo-fascists would infiltrate and spy on and deliberately instigate and goad leftists into acts of terrorism and how they would aggravate the magnitude of ostensibly "leftist" violence by secretly planting much more powerful bombs of their own at the same time and places and in that sense "frame" the "leftists"  for a greater number or degree of terrorist activities and culpability for such than that they actually perpetrate and deserve and how the CIA, worried about the possibility of the Communists winning elections in Italy and how certain military elements in the NATO, afraid of Italy veering towards the Soviet bloc and exiting NATO,would join in a giant conspiracy to blacken the leftists by secretly rendering assistance to the neo-fascists in such attempts by them to associate the leftists in the public mind with unacceptable acts of violence..

It's an intriguing, suspenseful and totally absorbing film. But it's a tale told with apparent neutrality, more like a documentary than the run of the mill spy thriller or detective crime story. We are given a title, a place, an incident in the overall quest for the "truth", followed by details of the relevant incidents and the investigation either at the police station or in courts, at the meetings of the anarchists and those of the neo-Fascists, meetings of various political parties, at cabinet meetings and the university lecture halls, where leftist intellectuals intent on influencing young minds call them to revolution. We are shown the "evidence" and also how certain people interpreted the same. But we have no way of knowing definitively which is "the truth". All we got are the evidence and the interpretations and theories built upon such evidence. What keeps the film from being a dull and boring documentary of the intricacies of Italian politics, internal and international, at the time is the director's emphasis on the personal lives of Luigi Calabresi and the personality of Giuseppe Pinelli.. We are shown how they interact with their wives and children in the privacy of their homes. Both of them share a number of things in common, trust of and fidelity to one's comrades and common concern for what they believe to be the "truth". Despite their positions on opposite sides of the law, they share a common humanity. For this, Calabresi paid with his life. On the May 17, 1972, his body was found beside his car parked his home, a bullet in his head. Apparently some one thought he knew too much for his own good. The indetiguable search for "truth" can be fatal, in more senses than one.

The acting is superb, with matching cinematography and the Arvo Part like music, with its insistent sound, seem to compliment well that doubt in Calabresi's mind which would not let him rest until he got to the bottom of what he regards as the "truth". My only criticism is that Giordana may be trying to cramp far too much into two hours. But given the complexity of Italian politics at the time, I can't really take him to task. He had pulled out a credible and suspenseful film from all millions of little relevant "facts". My compliments to him.  But I am not alone. The Italian Conspiracy won three David Di Donatello Awards (the Italian Oscars), including Golden Pegasus and also the Special Jury Golden Globe Award as best actor or best Actor (Pierfrancesco Favino) and Best Supporting Actress (Michela Cescon), playing Pinelli's wife.