The end music of a film is far from being an ornament—here is a notion that Gomorra made me reflect upon the first time I saw it and one that never ceased to fascinate me.
On a beach immobilised by the setting sun, a front-end loader carries away two lifeless bodies. The disproportion is grotesque, poetic, and metaphoric at once. As the huge vehicle slowly drags our disconcerted stare towards the horizon, an electronic sound discretely chimes in and takes us even farther. Herculaneum, the amazing track written by Massive Attack for Matteo Garrone, springs from the waves gently breaking in the dimming light of the day. Like the sea inexorably deletes any sign on the shore restoring its natural immutability, so its crescendo erodes unspeakable memories somehow echoing the hopeless outburst of Rosaria Costa at the funeral of her husband, killed during the Via D’Amelio bombing—‘but they don’t change, they don’t want to change, they never will.’
Furthermore, as the diegetic shifts progressively to the non-diegetic, Gomorra’s end music doesn’t shout at us that the show is over but rather respects our need to stay with the film a little longer. On the one hand, it feeds the obscure anxiety that the images have left us with, on the other it gives us time to elaborate the bewilderment into astonishment, then disheartenment, perhaps even indignation. Its pulsing beat follows our emotional states creating an exhilarating sense of resonance.
For the sake of recording a couple of notes on the 2021 version, the new edit feels actually better than the original. The film is essentially the same, but the new shots are brilliant and of those omitted are not particularly missed. What really struck me as an unnecessary addition are the many explanatory cards. I found them pedantic and distracting, but more than anything they made me feel patronised—and for no reason. In whatever incarnation Gomorra will always be a miracle act of cinema, but art is not a passive experience and this unexpected redux seems disappointingly to doubt it.
