What It Means to Be Human

What It Means to Be Human An Interview with Alice Rohrwacher Photo © by Robin Holland by Maria Garcia talian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher’s Lazzaro Felice (Happy as Tancredi professes to abhor his mother’s views, and reports her to the Lazarro) is about the young, eponymous sharecropper (Adriano authorities—after he fails to extort money from her. Lazzaro dies, the plan- I Tardiolo) whose pleasant demeanor and physical strength make tation is raided, and the peasants are displaced to the city. In voice-over, a him indispensable to his fellow workers. While these qualities alone set sharecropper recounts a folk tale about a wolf hunted by villagers; he always Lazarro apart, he is also a simpleton. He first appears in a pose of escapes his pursuers, and one day, as he prepares to eat a man, the wolf dis- unnatural stillness, backgrounded by the burnished colors of the tobacco covers the rare “smell of a good man.” An equivocal figure, and a totem ani- plantation of Inviolata. Someone calls out, “Lazzaro, are you staring mal for Italians, it is a wolf that discovers Lazzaro’s dead body and, in the into the void?” The shot recalls images from the lives of saints, ears second half of the film, warns the reborn Lazzaro of danger. A figure of cocked to a God only they can hear. Afterward, the scene shifts to the fable, the wolf’s presence places Lazzaro’s story into the realm of primordial toil of dozens of sharecroppers in the field, enveloped by large leaf belief so that his luminosity in the film, both in his visage and the way he is blades. A visit from the plantation overseer adds a disquieting note, lit, rather than evoking the nimbuses of Roman Catholic saints, makes him but that feeling is initially an ancient symbol of con- dispelled by the sheer sen- sciousness. sual beauty of the film. A magical-realist fable with numerous shifts As both the potential In the evening, the and surprises, Happy as Lazzaro shows its devourer and the initiating farmworkers gather around director using the form of a fairy tale to explore figure in Lazzaro’s perpetual their dimly lit table to death and rebirth, the wolf share a meal. A light bulb the light and dark sides of being human. remains inimical—and Laz- flickers and they are zaro’s resurrections, vain plunged into darkness. Jolted from this timeless tale, and into the twen- expectations. After the fall of Inviolata, Lazzaro reappears in the film’s tieth century (no cell phones are in evidence), the enslavement of Laz- “present,” twenty years later. He wanders the now ruined mansion, looking zaro and the other sharecroppers by the feudal overseer becomes appar- up at the painted ceiling that is a map of Inviolata. It is devoid of people ent, especially after the arrival of the landowner, Marchesa Alfonsina and, indeed, Lazzaro may be attempting to recall his previous life as a del Luna (Nicoletta Braschi). In her lavender silk dress and a white, sharecropper. Remembering his past incarnations, Lazzaro might perceive wide-brimmed hat, she disrupts the natural hues and symmetry of the his victimization and understand the patterns of disenfranchisement he place. Taking up residence in her hilltop mansion, the marchesa schools witnesses. Only his early death allows him to remain inviolate. Eventually her son Tancredi (Luca Chikovani) to the fact that the peasants expect reunited with the former tobacco pickers, Lazzaro wanders the streets of the subjugation; she also reads the sanguinary city with them. One night, they hear music tales of Catholic martyrs to her in-house from a nearby church and shuffle into the staff. In her recounting, they are stories building, but are rudely evicted. The music about the consequences of acting against follows them all the way home. Like Lazzaro, worldly authority. it is ephemeral, of the moment, and as If the marchesa is the antipode to Laz- evanescent as grace. zaro, they each emerge from an historical Rohrwacher’s virtuoso resolution of the memory, rooted in Europe, of gentry and film’s diverse visual landscape that, for serf. They are also reminiscent of the stock instance, draws from fifteenth-century Ital- characters of commedia dell’arte, Lazzaro ian art, Italian neorealism, and social real- as Pulcinella and the marchesa as Pan- ism, and the imbricating of narrative and talone, representing the immutable aspects thematic threads from hagiography and of human nature in an interplay that is fable, conjures the all-embracing and naive fated for deception and exploitation. In the quality of her protagonist’s gaze. The film’s first half of the film, Tancredi befriends orchestral score, which grows from a sublime Lazzaro by claiming that since his father Romantic-era piano theme (think Chopin or was an adulterer, they are likely half- Liszt), also belongs to Lazzaro. In the brothers; Lazzaro, who has no family, is restraint and deftness of Hélène Louvart’s enchanted with Tancredi and invites him handheld camera (the film is shot in 16mm), to live in his hillside cave. Sheep regularly Rohrwacher finds a documentary counter- sweep through Lazzaro’s home, animals point to Lazzaro’s point of view, especially in that in Roman Catholic iconography are a the final, devastating denouement. reference to Christ, as shepherd and sacrifi- In Cineaste’s interview with Alice cial lamb. In light of Lazzaro’s misplaced Rohrwacher, during the New York Film Festi- empathy for the marchesa’s heir, who is val in October, she said she could point to no faking his own kidnapping, the sheep pre- directorial influences for Lazzaro Felice, but figure Tancredi’s complicity in Lazzaro’s shades of Vittorio De Sica’s Miracle in Milan demise. (1951) float through the movie.—Maria Garcia CINEASTE, Winter 2018 41 Cineaste: What was to do good, and he is your original inspira- a kind person. It was tion for making Laz- beautiful to think of zaro Felice? this movie while I Alice Rohrwacher: was in Milan in the The inspiration al- winter. I think the ways came from very crew felt like the far away. It was not a poor did in Miracle flash, but rather in Milan, not be cause something rolling, of Lazzaro but be - or growing like a cause of the weather. plant. At one point, Sometimes, when the it appeared, but then sun appeared, it was there was a very long like that beam of process. In fact, I light in De Sica—all wrote this film very the poor would run quickly here in New under the sunbeams. York, but for many, We thought of doing many years I was that. thinking about the Cineaste: When you character, how to were writing, were construct this movie, you thinking of this and about how to film? Lazzaro (Adriano Tardiolo) is the simple-minded, good-hearted, and tell this tragic story almost saintlike protagonist of Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy as Lazzaro. Rohrwacher: No, in a humorous way. not so much. When I It is a pessimistic write, I don’t think story and one that is somehow ridiculous. When I was a child, I about other movies, but good movies are part of your memories and lived in a rented house in the countryside. It had been abandoned. dreams. As Godard said, movies make memories—the memories of Everywhere there were things of the previous owners, of previous humanity. If a movie works on you, it becomes your history and, lives. I wondered: why did these people leave? I think I also won- somehow, when you write, your way of thinking is mixed in with these dered why my family wanted to live in an abandoned house! This references. movie is more about why this house, the mansion, is abandoned— Cineaste: But I feel that this is the most Italian film you have ever and about what happened there. made. There are so many references to Italian cinema and to Italian art. Cineaste: Lazzaro is the Italian name for the Biblical figure, Lazarus, Rohrwacher: Our eyes are always looking for similarities. When and your character, at one point, rises from the dead. you are in love, this happens. Sometimes, you are walking on the Rohrwacher: Yes, and fifteen years ago, it was a common given name. street and you see some person, and you remember someone else. It Cineaste: Lazzaro represents an ancient, shared belief that predates religion. is a mystery, no? You don’t know why but you are always looking Rohrwacher: Yes, that’s right. It is the religion of humanity, not of dif- for a moment when everything was together, when life was clear. ferent religions or ethnicities. Of course, there are references to a par- It’s like Proust and the madeleine. I am not lying when I say there ticular religion in the movie, to Roman Catholicism. For instance, the are no directorial references, but maybe I share a memory with marchesa teaches the lives of the saints. I did not intend to celebrate another director. As for the paintings, yes, I was looking at Giotto. that in the movie; the stories are used to convey an oppressive process. There is a lot of Piero della Francesca, too. I think in the movie there is also another religion where a saint cannot Cineaste: And Lazzoro looks like an angel in a Botticelli painting. perform a miracle. This religion is simply a way to be. Rohrwacher: Yes, I didn’t think of that. Lazzaro Felice is a movie where Cineaste: Lazzaro is happy when others are happy.

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