Réka Kovács
Film: Space Metropoliz (Fabrizio Boni, Giorgio de Finis, 2013, 100’)
Friday March 7 – 21:00
Talking seems to rule this film a bit too much! The voluble Italian speech of this many contributors puts our ability of reading subtitles to the test, and as the story goes on, we can sweat more and more about missing some important details. Because it is not only the words that flow, but the excellent thoughts and ideas of these people, one better than the other. Avoiding any bullshit, there is always a new twist, point of view or truth that keeps forcing our stunned minds to come to the right conclusions. In the meantime the narrative is just being interpreted in Film Language with a great sense of proportion.
First of all, these Romans are very adorable. They declare a space program for a community on the margins, and everyone’s daily routine from the sax player to the philosopher, the radical ufologist, the acrobat, the architect, the astronomer, the artist, the performer and the facepainter girl gets into service. The purpose is a safe landing and a happier life on the Moon. By watching the enthusiasm of the organizers and the inhabitants of Metropoliz (Tor Sapienza district, Roma) about the project, considering their moon landing as a mere fake seems absurd. While Marco brings rocket models to perfection, Andrea designs a launch scaffolding, Daniel jumps into a spacesuit with ease and takes a moonwalk, Giuliano hangs out with the Moon rabbit and Cobol programs intelligent robots, there are unknown civilizations fighting in the kitchen, and delicious couscous being prepared. „A small step for mankind, yet a long trip for those who live on the other side of the city”, says the narrator right, when the company takes a bus to visit the planetarium. „You cannot go to the Moon with no money”, says a sceptic guy right at the start, and his sentence echoes on our minds from time to time, just as the famous quote.
However, this mixed colony of the abandoned salami factory had faced the lack of money and other troubles so many times that some mission to the Moon cannot beat them. The wide perspective that the project opens to them proves to be a good motivation to proceed. The reward for their efforts (and ours, who kept reading) is realizing that the completely new establishment based on the common good, in which refusing immigrants or the outcast is an absurdity – indeed can exist. The time of setting up national flags triumphantly on the surface of the Moon is over.