Sacro GRA (2013)

After the India of Varanasi’s boatmen, the American desert of the dropouts, and the Mexico of the killers of drugtrade, Gianfranco Rosi has decided to tell the tale of a part of his own country, roaming and filming for over two years in a minivan on Rome’s giant ring road—the Grande Raccordo Anulare, or GRA—to discover the invisible worlds and possible futures harbored in this area of constant turmoil. Elusive characters and fleeting apparitions emerge from the background of the winding zone: a nobleman from the Piemonte region and his college student daughter sharing a one-room efficiency in a modern apartment building along the GRA; a botanist making audio recordings of the interiors of palm trees to detect and then poison the insects that are devouring them like a plague; a modern day cigar-smoking prince doing gymnastics on the roof of his castle, surrounded by the sea of new apartment buildings proliferating around him; a paramedic in an ambulance eternally on duty treating car accident victims along the vast road; and an eel fisherman living on a houseboat beneath an overpass along the Tiber River. Far from the iconic sites of Rome, the GRA is a repository of stories of those at the edges of the everexpanding universe of the capital city.

This little movie is classified as "documentary" and named after the GRA, which is the orbital road that surrounds the city of Rome. So it would be legit to expect the environment of the metropolis suburbia to be the center and the focus of the narrative. Instead, I was quite surprised to discover how "Sacro GRA" is basically a gallery of portraits, featuring a series of curious and inspiring characters.

All this people share the apparently unexciting fate of living their lives in the depressed urban context on the edge of the "Big Beauty". I mention the recent movie of Paolo Sorrentino because the comparison between the real characters of this "Sacro GRA" and the fictional characters of "La Grande Bellezza" was, to me, quite automatic: while in the lavish apartments and villas of Sorrentino's movie desperation grows like a sunflower in summer, in the much harder situations depicted by Mr. Rosi the people looks to be less prone to self-pity, and more than willing to hope, and trust, and love, and believe - just like if they were in a 19th century romance.

Filtered through the eyes and lives of these unbreakable spirits, even the occasional sad moments acquire a bittersweet aftertaste, and become more acceptable: just the negative proofs of the existence of happiness like pawprints left in the woods by the passage of a wild, legendary beast.

5% recovery record included
Interchangable links.
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