Going down in a cave while the entire world is going the other way up. It’s 1961. Michelangelo Frammartino‘s Il buco is a movie about countermovements. Even here in Venice challenges four other Italian movies in competition definitely more mainstream and a bunch of international movies with Hollywood stars. But the movie directed by the author of Il dono and Le quattro volte already won its award. Because he is a counter-movement in the current idea of making movies. Without diminishing Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, the charismatic Antonio Banderas, the intense Olivia Colman, the virtuoso Paolo Sorrentino or the poetic Almodóvar, Frammartino confounds the competition of Venezia 78. Another kind of cinema is possible, different from the current dramatic and entertainment conventions. Il buco is about deepness, physical, aesthetic and psychological and digs inside us. It’s an epic poem that celebrates the collective value of meeting and researching. A poem in which man is not on top of the chain, but he’s also one of the elements of the nature. Frammartino does not use words and music, his soundtrack is made sounds and rumors unknown or forgotten. We are watching so many good movies in Venice. Il buco goes beyond any content and aesthetic evaluation that other critics have to make in this case. Il buco is the manifesto of a revolution in the shape of a laic prayer about our relationship with our planet, history, existence. A revolution that will not change cinema industry, but that could change deeply the audience. Is there anything more to ask to the art of making movies?
A powerful cinema concept
