Buongiorno, Notte Reviews

Marco Bellocchio's Good Morning, Night is an interesting study of the Aldo Moro kidnapping, but it's far too restrained and distanced to offer the kind of potent dramatic and political statement the material might have evoked. Audiences unfamiliar with the events depicted in the film will likely be a bit lost. Bellocchio doesn't provide much context, in terms of what the Red Brigade and why they targeted Moro (Roberto Herlitzka), a Christian Democrat leader who was working to forge a unified government with the communists. Good Morning, Night is a fictionalized account, focusing on the one woman who worked with the Red Brigade cell responsible for the kidnapping. In the film, she is Chiara (Maya Sansa), and the film is at its best when Bellocchio attempts to penetrate her subconscious, as she obsessively looks in on the group's captive, and discretely argues with Enzo (Paolo Briguglia), a co-worker at her "day job," about the Red Brigade's tactics. Chiara's dreams and fantasies about the predicament she and her comrades share with their victim are effective in conveying her mindset. Sansa and Briguglia deliver standout performances, in part because their roles are the most three-dimensionally written. Herlitzka brings a great deal of warmth and intelligence to his tragic role, even though he's silent in many of his scenes. He's very credible as a sincere and charismatic politician. As a whole, the film is perhaps too quiet and thoughtful, but it captures the sad spirit of the era, and it achieves its strongest impact in explicitly fusing the personal and the political.