El Alamein is a movie well deserving of being watched and appreciated. Surely one of the best Italian movies from the turn of the millennium, and a an apt and just requiem for those who gave their lives, or their best years, in the sands of Sahara.
The ensemble of imagery and music is haunting enough to give us an idea of what war in the desert was. The director takes no definite political stance, limiting himself to describe things as they historically were for too many of our soldiers and officers. The young student volunteer, Serra, goes to war excited at the prospect of conquering Egypt, but being a well-read, clever boy, soon realizes the failure of Mussolini's army, and the power of the British and Commonwealth enemy. The other roles are a bit more rhetorical, in the sense that they recall some old clichés: the wise sergeant, the numbed-out lieutenant, living in a sort of permanent shell-shock and crushed under his responsibilities.
The best part of the movie is the dry (we are in the desert, aren't we?) narration of the soldier's life, made of boredom, heat, dirtiness, thirst and hunger, with sudden moments of absolute panic when the Brits, an ominous presence in the (short) distance, send ahead a marksmen, or launch random artillery or mortar attacks. The night battle scenes are short and frantic, while miles away from the video clip style so dear to Americans. They are made really creepy by a haunting soundtrack, plus some quite gory and realistic depictions of wounds, shell-shock people going crazy and disappearing on the battlefield and so on.
It was just and sobering to end the movie on the sight of the memorial to Italian soldiers fallen at Alamein. That's what remains, of all that action, of all those futile efforts to swim against the current of history. A country tragically defeated, since then only partly free, subjected, in one way or another, to its captors, deeply divided and at the same time always ready to the serve the strongest: that has been the enduring legacy of Fascism. Maybe those dead, despite having fought for the wrong side, deserved better: they themselves were the betrayed.
The ensemble of imagery and music is haunting enough to give us an idea of what war in the desert was. The director takes no definite political stance, limiting himself to describe things as they historically were for too many of our soldiers and officers. The young student volunteer, Serra, goes to war excited at the prospect of conquering Egypt, but being a well-read, clever boy, soon realizes the failure of Mussolini's army, and the power of the British and Commonwealth enemy. The other roles are a bit more rhetorical, in the sense that they recall some old clichés: the wise sergeant, the numbed-out lieutenant, living in a sort of permanent shell-shock and crushed under his responsibilities.
The best part of the movie is the dry (we are in the desert, aren't we?) narration of the soldier's life, made of boredom, heat, dirtiness, thirst and hunger, with sudden moments of absolute panic when the Brits, an ominous presence in the (short) distance, send ahead a marksmen, or launch random artillery or mortar attacks. The night battle scenes are short and frantic, while miles away from the video clip style so dear to Americans. They are made really creepy by a haunting soundtrack, plus some quite gory and realistic depictions of wounds, shell-shock people going crazy and disappearing on the battlefield and so on.
It was just and sobering to end the movie on the sight of the memorial to Italian soldiers fallen at Alamein. That's what remains, of all that action, of all those futile efforts to swim against the current of history. A country tragically defeated, since then only partly free, subjected, in one way or another, to its captors, deeply divided and at the same time always ready to the serve the strongest: that has been the enduring legacy of Fascism. Maybe those dead, despite having fought for the wrong side, deserved better: they themselves were the betrayed.