Mark Reviews Movies: THE HAND OF GOD

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 2, 2021

The Hand of God tells the story of a teenager trying to figure out his life—what he wants, what he doesn't actually need, what he wants to do. It's clearly a personal tale for writer/director Paolo Sorrentino, whose protagonist lives in the same place and time that the filmmaker did as a teen, experiences the same or similar troubles, and eventually decides, almost on a whim, that he wants to make movies. For something that's so close to Sorrentino, there's an unfortunate emotional distance within the movie itself.

That feeling begins, perhaps, with the opening shot, which gives us an aerial view of the sea and the city Naples, bustling with the noise of busy life, before the helicopter shot retreats back toward the water. There's an undeniable mystique and beauty to the shot, and indeed, there are moments in the proceeding story that match that sensation. They rarely, though, involve the people in this tale.

They are many, beyond Fabietto Schisa (Filippo Scotti), the teen whose most defining features are his uncertainty and his apparent status as a stand-in for Sorrentino. We first, though, meet Patrizia (Luisa Ranieri), the boy's aunt by marriage, who will be later be dubbed Fabietto's muse by the teenager himself. It's difficult to tell what inspiration she provides, except some vague thought of hope, since most of the movie treats her as a sex object for Fabietto and his older brother Marchino (Marlon Joubert) to ogle and discuss in their shared bedroom at night (If one has seen any of Sorrentino's previous movies, he definitely has a type when it comes to particular women being portrayed in a similar way, so there is that, one supposes).

She is childless but desperately wants to become a mother. The solution might be a mysterious man, connected to a mysterious figure called "the Little Monk," but ultimately, none of this really matters. She's either imagining the encounter, on account of broadly defined mental health issues, or sincere, which also doesn't matter. This becomes Fabietto's story immediately after the opening scene.

That story becomes a string of jumbled reminiscences for about half of the movie. Fabietto, who's a loner with no friends, spends time with his parents, banker Saverio (Toni Servillo) and prankster Maria (Teresa Saponangelo). They have purchased a new house and are preparing the place where they'll live their retired, empty-nest years, while also having some sweet routines and moments that turn out to be too good to be true in some regard.

Marchino, meanwhile, wants to become an actor, but an audition for an unseen Federico Fellini puts a terminal damper on his dream. The sons also have a sister, who seems spend every waking moment in the bathroom, which is a pretty amusing gag about the strange particulars of how memory can define another person's existence.

We meet Fabietto's extended family, a group of gossipy eccentrics whose presence diminishes once their comedic potential has been expended. We also discover a few odd neighbors, such as the Baroness Focale (Betti Pedrazzi), who will later give the teen his first and rather uncomfortable experience in sex, and a strange man (sharing a name with and looking a bit too much like a certain video game character for it to be a coincidence) with a habit of drawing phalluses everywhere he goes. In retrospect, the presence of Fellini in the first half of this story doesn't seem like an accident.

Admittedly, some of this is entertaining as a comical slice-of-life, where people come and go, have little or big dramas, and seem to forget them once the local soccer team, given new life on account of the arrival of Diego Maradona (The movie gets its title from him, as well as the most significant event of the story), starts playing. Then, without warning, Fabietto's entire life and sense of himself is demolished.

Everything could turn here, in terms of focus and tone, and in certain ways, it does. The story does narrow its scope to Fabietto, who finds himself directionless (He wanders the city and sometimes beyond, avoiding his family, looking for connections, and finding at least one friend in the person of a temperamental cigarette smuggler) and unable to express his grief, and the mood abandons the light comic touch that has preceded this moment.

As a study of grief, the basic, aimless nature of the narrative rings true (A scene on the volcanic island of Stromboli, where people sunbathe against minor eruptions in the backdrop, serves as a potent visual metaphor). Since Sorrentino has more foundationally biographical and philosophical ideas in mind, the story isn't really about that. It all builds to a conversation between Fabietto and a rebellious, real-life film director (played by Ciro Capano), who rather brashly puts the teen on a course to figuring out what kind of artist Fabietto wants to be.

The specifics of that climactic scene are refreshing. The Hand of God, though, spends so much time dealing in broad terms about its purpose and Fabietto that, on a dramatically and narratively, it feels like an anticlimax—the beginning of a story to come.

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