Original subtitles

ROMAN DIALOGUE

Have you finished shooting the film?

Yes.

The dialogue is done?

Almost.

Is it here that it should start?

It starts now,..

with your question.

This scene we filmed it on April 27th, 1982,..

at eleven at night.

It seems to have rained.

No, it was not raining.

It's the asphalt that shimmers.

It's windy. It's cold.

Rome is very close to the sea.

The cold comes with the wind,..

and the wind comes from the sea.

Can anything be discerned?

Yes,..

guitars,..

songs,..

the sound of the fountains,..

The sound of water.

Of the rivers... - Yes,..

of the Nile.

Of the Danube.

Of the Vistula.

Yes.

Then, at intervals, you no longer hear..

anything,..

anything.

Everything merges.

Shortly, you'll see the great central fountain of Piazza Navona.

It's white and black.

It's in full light,..

brightly lit

It's almost summer.

And it looks like ablaze, in the cold water.

Look at it,..

icy, livid.

What you see in these folds are the forms of the rivers.

Of the Middle East,..

of Central Europe.

And in front of it, people.

What is it about, this movie?

About a dialogue.

About you and me, talking.

Be it in Rome or elsewhere,..

I don't hear anything else but you, and me.

Tell me,..

why a dialogue?

To give space to this city?

To aerate her with love?

To alienate her from us?

To make her be forgotten?!

One may say so, yes.

I, however, I would say so,..

to preserve her among us,..

for us,..

like a room.

The room limits established by us.

Rome, would be our room.

Rome.

This perfect representation of immortality.

You talk about death?

I think so,..

I talk about us.

Of Rome,..

I see nothing but her illusory appearances,..

her suburbs, her hills,..

a whole of details in which she looses herself.

I love her surroundings,..

declined from her name, "the Roman countryside".

I love you,..

but I don't love Rome.

You do not understand it,..

but I love you with an innocence such as..

to not understand that it is impossible to love, together, you, and Rome.

When we filmed the personas of these bas-reliefs, we didn't want to film else.

To us, they seemed to be moving,..

to be looking at us.

What fixed thought makes you so pale,..

leads you to lock yourself in this hotel room, to not expect anything?

Give me an idea of this abstraction.

I might say,..

just imagine that I happen to be continually diverted from Rome,..

by another thought,..

contemporary with that of Rome,..

but formed elsewhere,..

far from Rome,..

in the north of Europe.

And it remains of it nothing? - Nothing,..

other than its memory.

Is it in Rome that assails you this memory of the north? - Yes.

In Rome, here. With you.

But like, an infidelity committed during sleep.

Sometimes, in the evening, around sunset,..

the colors of the Appian Way are those of Tuscany.

It is a thought that I've known very young,..

the first time, reading in a tourist guidebook,..

the second, during a school trip.

It is about a civilization contemporary with Rome,..

now vanished.

I wish I knew how to tell you the beauty of that country..

where this civilization and this thought were formed.

for a brief, adorable, coincidence.

The simplicity of their forms,..

of their geography,..

the warmth of their eyes,..

of their climate,..

of their fields, meadows, skies.

As if I saw your smile,..

but as lost.

Your body,..

but decayed.

Our love,..

but without you and without me.

How can it be said...

You know,..

I don't think that Rome thought.

She proclaimed her thought.

Elsewhere, it was thought.

Elsewhere, was carried out the thinking of Rome.

Rome was only the edict of this thinking.

And at the beginning, what did say, the guidebook?

That everywhere, elsewhere, there are works of art, statues, temples,..

public buildings, baths,..

reserved areas, arenas of death ...

While here,..

you don't find anything.

Anything.

That reading is lost in childhood.

Then it was forgotten.

And then, one day,..

there was that school trip by bus.

And the teacher told us that there, in those lands that we were crossing,..

had existed a civilization.

It was a rainy afternoon,..

nothing could be seen.

And so the teacher told us about the lands of heath and ice.

It is a flat region without reliefs, there's nothing to be seen.

Nothing!

Only the sea line, at the end of the fields.

I had no longer thought back to that land.

And Rome?

I was used to Rome.

The teacher said,..

"although there is no trace, there was a civilization,..

here."

"There is nothing left,..

other than some holes, cavities in the ground,..

invisible, from outside."

It was learned that those holes were not graves.

It was never known that they were not temples.

Only one thing was certain:

they had been made,..

constructed.

It seems that those holes sometimes are as big as rooms,..

sometimes as big as buildings,..

or become hallway, passages, secret networks.

I am amazed!

Above the holes, below the sky,..

there are cultivations arrived over the years, through centuries, up to me,..

baby girl.

The holes are near the ocean,..

along heaps of sand, in the plowed soils of the land.

The land does not cross any village.

The forest is cleared.

The land has no name.

And yet, yes,..

we know it.

And, since we've always known it,..

there is no need to rediscover it.

The land is there,..

in space and in time, since the origins,..

indelible.

From millennia,..

to children in the age of reason is explained, "Look,

the holes you see,..

were made by men from the north."

"How do we know?", asks the child.

He is told,..

"since the first man descended from the north, we know."

Look,..

look as well, the pale stone, where rested the mother..

on the eve of the martyrdom of his son.

Yes.

Look down there, as well.

That path was used to go looking for water.

And also to go from the countryside to the markets in the city.

And even by the Jerusalem thieves to reach the Calvary.

It was thus the only road. Look.

And you could not avoid taking it.

So this was the only, the sole way.

Thus, it is the way.

This country. This land.

In lack of other lands, other ways,..

other countries,..

other women,..

other children.

We recognize these smooth stones,..

called "dormitory of women", at wakes.

The stones of the Roman piety.

Dragged by oxen, taken from the sea.

The Calvaries, therefore,..

were places surrounded by stones that were granted to women..

to keep vigil for their children,..

condemned to death.

Those Judean fools, judged as criminals by Rome.

The Calvaries could be located just from this circle of stone beds.

Imagine!

I fear, that Rome existed!

Rome has existed!

You should tell me what it means for you, this fear.

I don't know,..

what this fear is.

What, as different, it doesn't show me.

What it conceals to me, revealing itself.

Where it takes me,..

towards which night, in the illusion of light.

One would say that you are afraid of the visible..

of things. - Yes,..

I'm afraid.

As if Rome had contaminated me.

According to you, the men of the holes had intuited the Roman attempt..

to reign over the world of thinking and of bodies?

Everything was known, then, in the land,..

from the fugitives from the empire,..

from the deserters,..

from God's errants, from the thieves.

Everything was known,..

about Rome's attempt,..

and was witnessed the waste of her soul.

And while Rome proclaimed her power..

losing the blood of her own thinking,..

the men of the holes..

remained immersed in the darkness of the spirit of the future.

Thinking!

They knew they were thinking, perhaps?

They ignored the way to write, and to read.

For a long time. Since centuries.

I have not told you the essential.

The only occupations of the men of the holes,..

were tied to God

Empty handed,..

they watched.

You mentioned..

a current love.

Yes.

A love alive? - Yes.

In what way, this relates to Rome?

Because this dialogue has been made on her.

And it is this dialogue, on this love,..

that covers Rome with a mantle of purity.

Lovers have wept on the spot where lies the immense and lifeless body..

of her story.

And on what would they have wept?

On themselves!

Here, you could only speak of a famed love.

Yes.

Who would have spoken?

A queen of the deserts.

A queen of Samaria.

And who would have answered her?

A general of the Roman legions.

A warlord of the empire.

All of Rome knew about the war? - Yes

And the obstacles to that love,..

depended just on the renown of the war.

Yes.

And how they knew that it was a great love?

Just as they knew the number of dead,..

of prisoners.

They would have known as well in case of peace.

They knew just..

because they had captured her, rather than kill her.

This young woman of Samaria, queen of the Jews,..

queen of a desert with no interest for Rome,..

conducted in Rome with such respect, in the midst of thousands of dead,...

how not guess?

This love is greater than what history tells.

Greater, yes.

Greater than what he wished, him,..

the destroyer of the temple? - Yes.

It was ignored by him.

He was not aware to love her.

Except, perhaps,..

when he had her in his power,..

in the rooms of the palace,..

the guards asleep late at night.

And of the temple lovers, did not remain even a word?

A confidence, an image? - No.

She didn't speak Roman,..

he didn't speak the language of Samaria...

In this hell of silence,..

was born the desire.

Imperious, definitive.

Then it extinguished.

It is said that it was a beastly love,..

fleeting. - Yes.

Without a doubt it was this.

A love.

And the Senate inquires,..

and leaves to him,..

the Roman commander,..

the task to announce her that he decided to abandon her.

It is thus him, to announce it to her?

Yes, it's him.

I see the scene.

It is evening.

Everything happens very quickly.

He, enters the apartments,..

and with incredible brutality, announces her that a ship will arrive,..

within days, he says,..

and that she shall be transferred back to Caesarea,..

that he can't do anything but give her back her freedom.

Then he leaves,..

to no longer return.

She... should die? - Yes,..

and instead she lives,..

she doesn't die.

She dies, for the illusion of being at once prisoner of a man,..

and of loving him.

But she lives, too.

Yes.

She lives because she believes that she loves him, by chance? - Yes.

She weeps.

She does believe to be weeping over her ravaged kingdom,..

over the tremendous void that awaits her.

She lives because she weeps.

She exists for this weeping.

She loves it,..

for this knowing blinded with tears.

And of this she lives.

That he had captured her, has aroused in her the passion for him?

Yes.

If he had been captured by her army,..

do you think he would have loved her passionately?

I don't think that he would have been capable.

Close your eyes.

Look at her.

Her!

Look at her abandonment.

Spontaneously,..

she yields to the fate offered to her.

She accepts being a queen,..

she accepts being a prisoner...

depending!

From where she takes this genius?

Perhaps, already from her regal function.

From the captivity of a reign within a reign.

Perhaps from a natural predisposition.

And him,..

how could he ignore her so?

There is nothing that he believes that he can not dispose at his pleasure.

Since ever,..

behind him,..

the black supervision of the tutors of the empire,..

that dictated him even his very nature.

He saw nothing.

He did not see the story of his life,..

but the story of his actions

What still remains of him in the obscure lands,..

vanishes for ever..

as he exits that room.

I pray you, I implore you!

Grant him some pain.

I grant him.

Often, it will be unbearable.

When, at night,..

he will awaken, knowing that she's still there,..

for a brief time,..

what separates them from the vessel arrival.

It will be paid homage, to this pain.

Rome, gratified by her prince, will weep with him.

Yes.

They will suffer with him, of his pain.

They will weep, for the pain of the prince for having lost her.

And on her pain, will they weep? - No.

It suffices just one pain,..

and that of the prince is the best, for the state.

When you enter this span of history,..

she becomes silent,..

for all.

Returned free,..

she's besotted.

Never, she will come out of it!

There will be no more than an endless repetition..

of the phrase of the prince:

a ship will come,..

and you'll be brought back to Caesarea.

He should have killed her, maybe?

Why not?

But we would have lost her.

So, instead, she arrived up to us.

And what will become of him?

You know,..

I see him clearly exiting the room,..

mortally wounded.

Then, I can't see him anymore.

We could have talked..

of many other things, still.

Of what would have happened, later,..

when he would have told her that, within days, the ship would come to take her.

We could have talked as well..

of what would have happened..

if the Senate had not rejected her.

Of how she would have died on the straw in a wing of a Roman palace.

We could have talked of everything.

Of all this, too. Of this endless death.

Even of their love, earlier,..

in Caesarea,..

when he meets her, twenty years old,..

and decides to take her with him,..

to then marry her.

And we could have talked about the discovery,..

centuries later,..

in the dust of the ruins of Rome, of a skeleton of a woman.

The bone structure..

would perhaps have been able to tell us who she was,..

and when.

We could have said..

many other things yet.

How it was not possible to avoid seeing her,..

seeing her still, after two thousand years.

Large. Straight breasts.

The legs, the feet,..

the posture,..

the light swaying of the hips that spreads throughout the body.

That body that has overcome deserts, wars,..

the heat of the deserts, the heat of Rome,..

the stench of the galleys, the galleys of exile.

Tall... She's tall!

Big ...

Thin, lean.

The hair is black as a black bird.

The eyes are green,..

mixed with the black powder of the Orient.

The eyes are already drowned..

in a moisture of tears.

The skin of the body is almost dark,..

and shines like silk, like sand.

This ordinary woman,..

the queen of Samaria.

Not to show anything, of a love.

Not to imagine anything, of a love.

To film what's there,..

what shows up, there,..

before us.