What happens when a man wakes up after 31 years in a coma? “When”, the new film by Veltroni- Corriere.it

A film critic would explain it to you better, with more technical reasoning: here the story is told directly from the belly, thinking back to the mental notes and re-reading the scribbles thrown down on the Moleskine in the dark of a small room.

Walter Veltroni’s latest film
— just previewed, but out in theaters tomorrow with the same title as the book it’s based on, When
which he wrote in 2017 for Rizzoli — beautiful, intense, full of politics and emotions (having said that it would finally be time to reclaim the ancient right to excite us).

Immediately, small hints on the plot, which goes around to the question: what happens in the existence of a man who falls asleep at 18 and wakes up when he’s 49? Giovanni Piovasco, the protagonist, played by Neri Marcor (formidable in measure and tenderness) was accidentally hit on the head by a banner pole during the funeral of Enrico Berlinguer, secretary of the PCI, on 13 June 1984, in Piazza San Giovanni, in Rome: deep coma, a long sleep evoked with the initial sequence shot — the voice of Valerio Morucci announcing the death of Aldo Moro on the telephone and the advertisement for Urr Saiwa biscuits, a valve television, a jukebox, a table football, a light down there — leading to an unexpected awakening in 2015, into a whole new world.

Here, in fact: the film runs on a double narrative track, between memory and futurebetween how we were and how Giovanni finds us, who observes with the eyes of an eighteen-year-old communist militant now stuck in the body of an adult, whose beard Sister Giulia cuts, a perfect Valeria Solarino under the veil, in credible ways and tones of the nun who watched over him until the miracle of his return.

dominant feeling
: John’s amazement
faced with the discovery of the unprecedented reality, it overlaps with that of the spectator. Veltroni forces us to look behind: yes, we’ve all come this far through enormous and crazy seasons, tragic, of beating beauty, revolutionary (also from a technological point of view). There is a scene in which Giovanni, during his convalescence, asks Leo, a problematic boy affected by selective mutism (played by Fabrizio Ciavoni), if there is a way to see what has been lost during his absence. Then Leo takes out the iPad, the succession of photos a tremendous and exhilarating breath: from Chernobyl to the Wall that falls, to Tiananmen Square, to Mandela who becomes a free man, then passing through Capaci and the G8 in Genoa, the Twin Towers, the Bataclan. The last image, very currentthe cemetery of a boat loaded with shipwrecked people.

Giovanni, do you find us better? Or worse? exactly what you want to ask him. The movie for it doesn’t judge, it has its own fairy-tale tonefull of references, allusions, built to offer many readings of the time gone by. After all, Veltroni is a director who believes in feelings and in the power of cinema to transmit them. So one could say yes, perhaps a leftist film, if being leftist means having the ability to interpret one’s time: managing to find a relationship between one’s values ​​and the changes in a constantly evolving society. Indeed not a nostalgic film (nostalgia, as we know, a rather right-handed value). Of course there are barrels of pure melancholy (when Giovanni discovers that on the ground floor of the Botteghe Oscure building, the historic headquarters of the Communist Party, there is a supermarket). Or poignant irony (Berlusconi first president of Milan and then of the Council? It was better if I didn’t wake up).

Then, suddenly, regret emerges for that certain sense of lost community: the sections, the red flags, the Unit. The intentions – says Giovanni – were right (an affirmation that is not taken for granted: fuse for a possible media debate, who knows what Elly Schlein thinks about it).

Notes (trying not to spoil too much): Gian Marco Tognazzi and Olivia Corsini work very well, respectively historical friend and ex-girlfriend of the protagonist. Ninni Bruschetta plays the head physician of the hospital. Anita Zagaria, Giovanni’s mother. Funny cameos (the film laughs a lot) by Stefano Fresi, Michele Foresta (the Magician Forest) and Massimiliano Bruno. Andrea Salerno, director of La7, a great forced bartender (always useful, in our environment, to know how to do another job). There are Pigi Battista and Professor Renato De Angelis. The real surprise, however, Dharma Eats Woodsas John’s daughter.

On the last note it says: after an hour the hope grows stronger that Giovanni will find the courage to give Sister Giulia/Solarino a kiss. She looks at him eloquently. And, frankly, Extremely beautiful. Widespread disturbance among some invited to the private screening. But admirable composure, when the lights came on. With us, in the room, there was also Giovanni Veronesi (who, for twenty-one years, in real life, had been Sister Giulia’s companion).