Original subtitles

On 16th December 2016,

Letizia, Piergiorgio, Maria Luisa, Alberto and I, Marco,

the surviving Bellocchio brothers and sisters,

were reunited with the wives, children and grandchildren,

at the Union Circle in Piacenza

to celebrate various birthdays.

I had organized the lunch thinking to do a film about my family,

but I didn't have any clear ideas yet.

I didn't know what exactly I wanted to do.

There was concern, given the old age of all of us brothers,

that it could be the last chance to be together alive.

But in reality there was another purpose.

It is a peaceful, cheerful day.

I'm here with my wife, with my daughter Camilla,

with my mother, with all of you, relatives and friends.

I only have one regret, or rather, two big regrets.

The big regret,

a pain that I've been carrying around for many years,

is that dad is not with us.

Tonino, my father.

And there is no Uncle Camillo.

I met him...

but was one year old when he passed away.

But...

But everyone has spoken to me of Camillo like of an angel,

that he was a cheerful, beautiful person,

a positive person.

Anyway, long live dad, long live Camillo and all of us.

Long live!

Long live Tonino!

You were right to remember that.

How I miss Tonino!

Camillo, the angel, is the protagonist of this film.

Second world war had broken out with the invasion of Poland

on September 1, 1939,

two months before our birth, on November 9, 1939.

We did not witness your birth.

Mom said: "The nurse helped me with Marco."

"Then", she said,

"there was another one."

- So I was born first. - Yup.

After three hours Camillo was born, mother said.

- It was a difficult birth. - He was born asphyxiated.

He had gone all black.

Then mom was very...

She sent for the priest

because mom was very obsessed.

She thought he was born dead and she wanted to have him baptized.

Remember that portrait that Giorgio has in his house?

That priest came to the house three times to baptize Camillo.

- So... - No, twice, the third time in the parish.

So he was baptized three times.

Twice in the house because he looked like he was going to die.

I see.

- All right... - Marco just once.

Even then Mom was obsessed about hell and heaven.

She had to baptize him...

He would have ended up in limbo, not in heaven.

Limbo, yes.

If he wasn't baptized, he would have ended up in limbo.

There was also a limbo, understand?

But it wasn't a bad place.

It wasn't a bad place, limbo.

- It seems that now the Church... - They took it off.

They removed it, it no longer exists. Limbo is gone.

- Maybe even purgatory... No, hell. - Purgatory exists.

It exists.

So if one is not baptized?

I do not know.

They go to heaven anyway.

They go to Heaven? I understand.

TOWARDS THE PEOPLE

We grew up on artificial milk and one support nurse for the first few months.

My mother always suffered from not having milk.

I saw them after six months.

I was in boarding school.

I remember I was at the table, ready to have breakfast.

The superior tells me:

"Bellocchio, two little brothers were born."

- Twin brothers. - Two little brothers.

I didn't remember that Mom...

- I didn't notice that Mom was so... - Pregnant.

I didn't realize it, because she was never...

Very big.

I imagined that mom

had taken two poor people.

The poor always came to the door.

They had small children and my mother did charity.

Maybe Mom had taken two of their children.

When I came home, I saw you.

You were sitting at the table, looking at me.

You were awake.

Yes, I was happy,

but I didn't understand that children were born of a woman.

I hadn't figured it out yet.

No!

I found out after the war.

Maria told me:

"So you don't know how they are born?"

She said to me: "Have you seen a cow?"

"Have you seen a calf be born of a cow?

Then she said:

"It's the same, a woman does this too."

Aaaah...

Hail the Duce!

10 JUNE 1940

Fighters

of land, sea, air.

Black shirts of the revolution and of the legions,

listen to me!

The declaration of war

has already been delivered to the ambassadors

of Great Britain and France.

13 JULY 1944, PIACENZA

Because of the bombing

we left Piacenza and we went to Castell'Arquato.

28 APRIL 1945 LIBERATION OF PIACENZA

When the war was over we immediately returned to the city.

My father was afraid that

families without a home had occupied our apartment.

From October we went to school,

first grade at San Vincenzo.

In spring,

without understanding anything,

we little ones helped with the referendum campaign of 2 June 1946.

The referendum between monarchy and republic

was a defeat for our family.

The women had all voted for monarchy,

and my father too.

Umberto II, the May King, had to go.

We passed from San Vincenzo to the Pietro Giordani public school.

We stayed there up to the fifth grade.

Camillo and I, always in class together.

School and church were very close to home.

Our parish was Sant'Antonino,

named after a little-known Christian martyr,

patron saint of Piacenza.

We received our Communion and Confirmation in one day

and the evening before Confession, three sacraments in 24 hours.

For the political elections of 18 April 1948,

the priests managed to scare us a lot.

Communist terror, fear to be torn from the family

just because we were educated in atheism in state colleges.

Suffering from cold, hunger, dirt,

the expropriation of houses and farms,

the fear of having to deny the Christian faith,

not so much for the condemnation of eternal flames, but for martyrdom.

To suffer martyrdom,

as in the times of the Roman emperors.

I was terrified of martyrdom

and for sure I would have denied all my faith.

The terror of hell

was something that was instilled

with a violence, with a perfidy,

something that could also...

go beyond physics.

Fear,

even if you don't believe,

can come back to you like a nightmare.

Let the Holy Year be for everyone

a year of purification and sanctification,

of internal life and repair.

A year of the great return and of great forgiveness.

Give, Lord,

peace in our day.

Peace to souls,

peace to families, peace to the fatherland,

peace between nations.

In the passage from the first to the seventh grade,

there was the discovery of the sea,

which Camillo and myself had never seen.

The salty water of the sea.

Our water experience were the rivers,

the streams, the Po,

the Trebbia, the Arda

in which I learned to swim, to float.

Fresh, sweet water.

Camillo had also learned to swim,

but he struggled a lot to float.

An older friend looking at him shouted from the shore:

"Camillo, are you drowning? Do you need help?"

As if after each and every stroke he could disappear into the bottom.

When we were in the seventh grade,

the family moved in an apartment of an owned building

in Via Poggiali 41.

I got the room with Alberto.

Camillo had to sleep with Paolo.

Camillo did not rebel against having to stay with Paolo,

the madman.

He slept for a few years with a 10-year-older brother

who spoke to himself, screamed, laughed and had a loud voice.

Madonna! Enough, enough, enough!

Keep calm, please.

Calm.

Damn fools!

Why was I born?

- Do not do that. - Damn!

Damn my mom!

Cursed all of them and all the saints!

Our Father who art in heaven...

- Die! - Children!

Sex! Damn pimps! Damn the priests!

- Do not say that... - Pig! Pig! Pig!!

Damn... Damn!

Damn children!

We all suffered due to Paolo,

and we would have liked him dead,

but no one posed the problem of Camillo in the room with the madman.

There was no solidarity,

everyone thought for himself in the asylum that our house was.

After three years of middle school,

let's say between 13 and 14 years old,

keeping in mind the different academic achievements

sensationally different

and the father's judgments...

There was one of these brothers

who made an immense effort to pull Camillo with him.

So they could stay on par.

Instead you were one maybe undisciplined,

you risked something for your indiscipline,

but you could just take a look at the book

and memorize it in an instant.

Your brilliance was undisputed

like his effort to stay behind...

I went to school with him up to the eighth grade.

Despite my being a mediocre student,

I did, however, have results superior to him.

Then there was this big,

mysterious idea of my father

that he should be a surveyor.

That was so wrong.

The father, who has absolute dominion over these things,

chooses to let you continue your studies and stay there at San Vincenzo.

Instead, Camillo was in Piacenza in this technical school.

The one for surveyors is chosen thinking that

a diploma was more than enough to make a living in business.

Thinking that he, in life,

would take his revenge with us "wise men",

those Latinists, Greek scholars!

Our father imagined a square,

a kind of lazy square,

and he said: "One day Camillo will break into this square

driving a custom-built car!"

It was a sign of a vitality

opposed to this laziness of all these...

Of one who made a fortune!

I'd say... he was just so wrong.

Why was he wrong?

Because Camillo didn't work.

He was not suitable for these studies.

He was not the man

who could leave for Argentina and come back as a millionaire.

- He was not an adventurer. - No, no!

He had a sort of shyness towards the things of life...

Or so I think.

Even a melancholy.

Yes, he had that veil of melancholy, that never disappeared.

Our father fell ill when we were still in middle school.

For years our mother and Piergiorgio were able to

hide the gravity of the evil from us.

I asked myself: "If it's not serious, why doesn't he heal?"

A month before his death, Piergiorgio told me the truth.

Father had cancer.

A word so frightening that it was hard to pronounce.

The bad evilness.

"He said he had provided for the good of the family.

He received four acquittals, the holy oil.

The prayers of the dying ones were said

a few hours before the transit.

I remained bitter for the fact that,

although he died in peace with God,

he was far from being resigned."

She tells of the last moments.

It was a scandalous sight...

I witnessed...

the entry of Monsignor Pagano di Sant'Eufemia, favored by mother...

Yes, I remember.

Father, with the last gasps that he had,

threw him out. "Out, you shitty priest!"

An anticlericalism emerged...

I had advised mom against it. "Let him die in peace."

No, she wanted to save his soul.

"The Eucharist that could have brought him the last comfort

could not be administered to him,

because in the last few days he barely swallowed."

Then, when he was in agony,

in the sense that he no longer understood anything,

Balzarini entered

and pretended to give him a little blessing.

I was there both times.

He no longer understood anything.

Mom recalled this as an uplifting death,

a death in peace...

Too bad that he could no longer swallow!

So the particle... Do you understand?

What a pity!

It's a total forgery.

I've never seen my father as anticlerical as in agony.

That speech that Piergiorgio gave,

where he said he kicked out Don Pagani...

Is it true or is it not?

Kicked out? Maybe Giorgio had done it...

"Do you want absolution?" "Yes, give it to me."

- Did Dad say "give it to me"? - "Give it to me", yes.

The scene that Giorgio tells is true, he can't have invented it.

Mom's things are also true.

It depends on what state you are in,

maybe stay a bit like that, morphine... Dunno!

Maybe you swap the priest for a nurse.

However, they are both right.

At the cemetery she burst into tears.

Camillo burst into tears.

Yes, he is the only brother who cried at the end of the funeral.

He burst into tears.

We had cried before.

Camillo had a crying fit.

- Was he the darling? - He heard that Father...

- Was he the darling? - He was the darling.

Dad loved him in particular?

He heard of having lost dad forever.

His friends were normal kids of this town, Piacenza,

no different from the rest of the world.

Normal guys who liked being together,

in a group, get together,

eat, party,

court girls,

use girls during the parties.

Camillo fit there completely.

These are the best things by Camillo

when he was in general... a nice boy,

with a great desire to have fun.

One time my sister...

I was there too that time, when they came to Milan.

"I brought you the paper Quaderni piacentini."

My sister: "I don't understand anything of it."

He said, "Me neither."

"I don't know if they understand anything."

Cool!

Inside this company of friends

they were all mocking

this commitment, let's call it that, of the family.

He didn't give a damn what was happening in the world.

If in Cuba Fidel Castro... He didn't give a damn!

They were bullocks, i vitelloni.

Being together like this was in contradiction

with the part of the family that was more committed.

But one should be careful, because Giorgio

had a certain kind of commitment to upscale, respectable things.

He had this magazine, high attendances,

of which Camillo was curious.

He perceived the great discrepancy between his way of life

and that of Piergiorgio, but he had great respect for him.

Not awe, but maybe a little bit yes.

While my commitment was a very plebeian commitment.

After all, I was a poor person... like that!

A quasi-moron sent to be a trade unionist.

With a certain logic we sent the more imbecile to the Chamber of Labor.

A beggar's place for some people, the Chamber of Labor!

This is why jokes flourished.

"Albertino went to the cell!"

I had nothing to do with the cell, which is a party thing, but...

It was kind of the same, "Albertino went to the cell."

"While he goes into the cell, his wife gets fucked by..."

It was all a flourish of jokes, of teasing.

There was a playful dimension in him

There were often things to laugh about.

The saying was:

"Pasolini drinks it, Visconti drinks it."

Who was the third? I don't remember anymore.

The fact that these great writers and directors were homosexuals

was a thing to be mocked, to underline with really bad jokes.

Unfortunately it was always like this.

The big regret is that since he was very inclined to joke,

no one thought about this...

No one thought that his pain was so deep.

His way of being, laughing and joking,

contradicted a lot certain moments of melancholy of him,

of discontent and difficulty.

There was also this, rejected, rejected, postponed,

exiled to Bergamo in this college.

The same thing in military life.

He is the only one who was in the military,

the only one.

He did very poorly in military service.

Caserta, then Codroipo,

always at the extreme in respect to central Italy,

meaning Piacenza, Milan, Bologna, etc.

He did the military with very few licenses.

He never managed to get home.

In my opinion he didn't do it unwillingly.

He was negatively obsessed with the question

"What do I do with my life? You have to work, do a job."

The military sends him back and then goes to be a resigned soldier,

without taking initiatives, he feels comfortable.

Finally a photo of Camillo on the tank!

There were two appearances.

Piergiorgio and you.

Great intelligence, great sensitivity, great earliness.

I didn't make the most serious mistake that I could have made:

to ape.

How have I managed to survive?

Because I have differentiated myself.

Compared to the two very strong models that were in the family,

I didn't have any problems,

no fear in choosing a third party, in differentiating myself.

Camillo was wrong there,

he didn't understand in time that his way was different.

But his feelings were not controlled.

He got sick

because of this impossible comparison.

There is a letter from Camillo...

from some years before he dies,

where he tells you that

if there was room for him too in this world...

- This letter to me? - To you.

- Do you have it? - I have a photocopy. I take it out.

He says... he doesn't...

He doesn't quite know what to do.

Going somehow towards the end of the studies,

he confesses

that he does not know what to do professionally.

- He didn't care to be a surveyor. - Yes, yes.

He was terrible in technical subjects.

And he said...

He asked you a somewhat naive question.

If by chance...

I don't know! I don't remember the words.

In the field of cinema there could be a space...

- A space for him too. - A space for him too.

"Dear Marco,

We haven't seen each other for almost a year.

Before leaving we had a long chat

about what I would like to do having finished the military.

It's been a long time,

and yet uncertainties are always present.

I think a lot about my future, but I can't get over it.

That same evening,

I told you about my idea to also try the film career.

Honestly, how do you feel about it?

You think it's an idea to be discarded or can I give it a little thought?

When you answer me,

tell me clearly what do you think of what I have presented to you.

With this I salute you and I give you a warm hug.

Ciao, my dear. Your Camillo."

Did you answer him?

I can't... I don't remember.

I don't remember.

We are talking of...1964.

54 years ago.

- You may not have answered him. - I might as well not have answered.

Yes.

It was of course a letter that was rather...

So...

That was rather...

A strong letter.

It seems to me that there was a strong enough discomfort.

I don't know if you...

Did you feel it?

Yup.

Each of the brothers sought to get by, to survive.

The theme of survival...

is one of the important themes of this story.

In my opinion, that letter is clear.

It shows a thing that we already know without the letter.

He had an absolute identity crisis.

Thinking about his future, he was sick.

It is true that you have not done yet your big movie.

But, you know...

He sees your determination, and that's what he's missing.

He didn't have a single clue what to do.

He had no...

He had no vocation.

He had no suggestions.

"Marco made his fortune in the cinema, is there a space there for me too?"

He was very confused.

In my opinion he didn't have the strength nor the courage

to make drastic or dramatic decisions.

To leave the family, his things, etc.

Maybe I didn't have the intention to bring him to Rome. To do what?

However even on that occasion, I was missing.

I did not answer him affectionately,

affectionately and fraternally.

Maybe I told him to let go these things...

In fact he complained to the brothers, perhaps even the elders,

about the lack of help in choosing,

especially your brother Piergiorgio, the bigger one.

Making movies, but what?

Become an actor?

- It's not for sure. - Maybe.

I think it was more of a loophole of some kind.

Making films has a procreative nature. Films are not done in Piacenza.

- It's a way to... - To run away.

- Did your sister listen to him? - She did and esteemed him highly.

They exchanged many books.

Camillo gave her "The Master and Margarita",

and that was beautiful.

Probably he felt with my sister

a sort of peace, tranquility.

She was very inclined to be protective, maternal.

She said to him: "Camillo, come on."

"You have other qualities. They do this, you..."

It probably wasn't enough, otherwise he wouldn't have done it.

For "best director", the Vela d'Argento award

goes to the young director Marco Bellochio

for "Fists in the Pocket".

"Dearest, Leonardi sent ten free tickets

and Letizia and I went to see your film 'Fists in the Pocket'.

I admire the versatility of your intelligence

and I think with apprehension of the intense wear and tear of your mind

in having to put together so many abnormal types,

each in their own way.

I thought I should consult people of high value

in the field of neurology and mental illness."

Nobody is like mom. Destiny, divine Providence,

misfortune touched her faith, her Christian patience.

At least she will have the consolation to be able to see you from up there.

Unfortunately nature does not make the leap, it doesn't jump.

"Sed patientia divina omnipotens est." But this is another matter.

Amen.

"Sometimes I burst into laughing at the satirical fervor of the priest.

I recognized your voice, I couldn't be serious.

But let's go a little slowly, Dear Marco.

Some people are too young, immature and sensitive.

They should abstain from seeing the movie.

I hug you affectionately and recommend that you take care of yourself,

because you have lost a lot of weight.

If you come back, I'll see you happy together with Alberto.

Kisses to both of you. Mom."

The blind mother in "Fists in the Pocket" perhaps meant for Camillo

not being seen as self-realized by his mother.

It is a question mark that we must leave hanging in the air.

But I think that while being recognized from outside is important,

from the point of view of personal safety,

being recognized from within is what matters,

being recognized in the eyes of the mother.

How unhappy I am.

What do you have? Do you want candy?

It happens many times that...

one struggles a little with his studies,

does a little less than the others.

The family does their utmost to give him some solutions.

The gym, I don't know, the usual things.

But it's as if he said:

"I didn't deserve it, they just gave them to me".

On the sense of failure, too all help becomes something that...

We all thought how beautiful it was to feel good and be happy

and in the meantime change the world.

He never had this thing and maybe he felt bad about it inside.

And then, incredibly enough,

when he finally "settled down", as mother would have said...

There is a mystery there.

He settled down happily because he discovered it himself.

He found that path alone, the College of Physical Education.

It is a university that in two, three years gives you a nice diploma

which allows you to be hired as a teacher.

Guys, he had settled down!

He understood that that would be his path.

He didn't settle down at all,

not because he was too ambitious,

but in my opinion he was looking for a job

that would take him a little outside from the family,

from this gravity of family things.

He had seen in you not so much a twin brother

as the one who had gone to Rome and made him see the possibilities.

In my opinion, he understood that it was a job he didn't like.

He did it because...

"On the right we can hear a great sound of bagpipes.

A ring picks up on the left.

A diploma has disappeared in Bologna and the author is called Camillo.

They all ran to look for him.

Jump, hang, in length and with the shaft,

but they realize with immense amazement

that those who seek he is a gymnast athlete. Oh my!"

And if they tell us that to remake the world

there is a lot of people to be sent to the bottom,

we who have too many times seen killed

only to say too late that it was a mistake, we will reply.

We will respond.

No! No! No! No! No!

When Tenco killed himself...

He suffered a lot for the death of Tenco.

With his gesture...

Tenco gave a slap to a whole world.

No, it's not because he had been excluded, because his song didn't win.

It's something deeper, it is not up to us to judge.

Gentlemen, this absurd gesture condemns so many of us

that are part of a given modern world of today.

A world that has taken us and does not leave us anymore.

Tenco kills himself by declaring that he does it for an injustice.

In my opinion this is the story.

Tenco kills himself for love, for this, for that,

because in Sanremo they treated him badly...

This element of injustice binds him.

That is...

the fact that I am not competitive

with my brothers or with the world, boh!

The fact that in comparison I am unsuccessful

and that this makes me unhappy, gnaws, digs,

goes down deep, that is an injustice!

On the other hand, let's face it,

like all those massacred by the school...

I know this thing, I have been massacred by the school.

All these subjects make excuses.

They make excuses. Are you rejected?

"Yes, but if you asked me this instead of this one..."

"It was bad luck."

He had some old anguish for sure.

You probably, with a family like this,

you tried to do certain things.

He didn't succeed.

He probably lived badly with Paolo...

- that was his name, right? - Yes, Paolo.

When you are a child and you see your older brother unable to...

He was really sick, he was screaming.

He distressed me too, all of us.

But mother imposed it,

because he was the firstborn and therefore he had to stay at home.

I can also pity her and understand her.

In fact, the other children suffered from this presence

which was highly disturbing, very disturbing.

For me mom was a woman...

who had been in mourning for quite some time.

For her, Paolo was a kind of mourning.

It was immediately clear that something was wrong.

It was immediately clear that something was wrong.

These doctors they had been consulted by father and mother

absolutely recommended to keep Paolo in the family.

I remember Paolo's screams.

They have been my obsession for many years.

But she said...

she did not seek... "Don't swear."

- Now it seems like nonsense. - I know.

He screamed desperately and she told him "don't swear".

If a mother has successful children,

she is happy, I guess.

Then there are two children with an unhappiness,

the oldest one and the deaf-mute.

You are a person charged with great pains and worries.

Perhaps...

This son is simpler to handle,

and although she feels close to him,

she doesn't take care of him in a particular way.

There is no attention,

nor why he is successful and works

nor because he has such an infirmity to deal with it.

I think... he may have lived through

the feeling of... not being sufficiently seen.

Then you say to yourself: "If he had told me what is happening..."

These are unacceptable things.

At that age, huh?

At my age it would be right!

29 NOVEMBER 1966, THE WEDDING OF PIA AND TONINO

1967, VENICE FILM FESTIVAL

The Golden Lion to a film by Luis Buñuel Bellocchio and Godard get special prizes

After the movie "China is Near",

which was very popular with the audience but also criticized,

I went to Turin to discover how students are fighting.

I just canceled myself.

"I don't want to be a bourgeois artist anymore."

Camillo in '68...

It was the last time I met him,

alive.

He was very unhappy and then I,

a little to free myself, not to address the issue,

I shot at him some revolutionary bullshit.

I told him that the existential redemption

was serving the people and to fight against the bourgeois class,

which had somehow determined also his unhappiness.

In the revolution,

if he adhered to this idea,

he would have found an existential redemption for himself.

I was unable to understand, or didn't want to understand,

that behind those questions

there was a very deep suffering.

When I spoke to him about revolutionary optimism,

he looked at me, smiling a little,

and he said to me: "Marx can wait."

In the sense:

"Dear brother,

I have other, primary needs rather than serving other people".

In this sense.

You were so busy trying to save the world,

the proletariat, etc.

that you didn't realize you had in the family such a fragile person with...

This is not a...

You were kids too, with your problems.

It's not an accusation, it was a way that...

You were tuned in different realities.

One day I told him to read "The Capital"

because the world was changing.

Already.

Do you know what he replied to me?

"Marx can wait."

- So? - What do you mean?

I'm just saying that I have always given a damn.

You talk about Pippo's suicide as if he depended on you.

Who are you? God?

Camillo's suicide perhaps...

It's a bit difficult because...

It was one thing that we did not expect.

The day when they found him dead

he had to meet with friends,

Beppe Ciavatta and company.

And then? Then nothing.

Who expected it? Do not...

- Did you go down to the gym? - No.

Mamma, Pia and Tonino.

They went down.

We were at lunch, there were no brothers.

There were the mother, the girls, Tonino and me.

Then when the day had passed,

still nothing of Camillo...

Cell phones didn't exist then.

There was no worry,

maybe mom was a bit angry.

On Christmas, Boxing Day he does not come,

does not warn, does not say anything.

I just remember we were expecting him.

He did not answer the phone.

There was a New Year's Eve in Ponte.

We were waiting for him and he didn't arrive.

I thought Camillo must have been sick.

We had to go and see.

I was hoping to make it in time.

Tonino came back up and said: "He's dead. Camillo is dead."

- Did Tonino go up? - Yes, he said: "Camillo is dead."

I don't remember.

Tonino said to me: "Are you strong?".

I told him: "Yes."

I told him: "I want to see it anyway!"

I went down with Pia. I went down with Pia...

Arriving...

There was the crucified mother, with arms wide open,

her eyes wide open, facing the wall, attached to the wall.

And he...

Then the mother, however,

when she first saw him,

- she undressed. - She ripped off her dress.

She got undressed.

That day she had put on a new dress.

Tonino told her: "Mom, are you crazy? No!"

He tried to keep her.

Tonino had a little...

We went down with Pia.

First Pia said: "Go upstairs to get a knife."

- To cut the rope. - He was still tied up.

I went up, took a knife and I went down.

Letizia was very brave.

She went up the ladder... It was an orthopedic ladder.

It wasn't that high,

this much was missing to the pavement.

He was in a very strange position.

Very low, with his knees bent.

I said: "This is impossible."

"It was a disgrace."

"A game or someone made..."

An accident.

She was very brave.

She went up, she cut the rope,

I took him, held him.

I hugged him, but the body was already hard.

It had happened hours ago.

Then I tried to lay him on the ground,

and in that moment...

I didn't know that air remains, then there was a sound of air.

I called him: "Camillo! Camillo! Mom, Camillo!"

But she didn't move.

Then it was explained to me.

I kept him in that tight embrace.

For me he became a brother.

Then we placed him on the bench.

Mom was going crazy.

She was holding Camillo's head like that.

Mom came back, she screamed: "I'm not dying!"

- Mom said "I'm not dying"? - "I will not die! I don't die!"

- What did she mean? - He's dead, but I'm not dying.

I don't know what that meant.

She wanted to die in place of her son.

Ah!

I was in Milan, and I got a phone call from Tonino.

He said to me, "You know, a terrible thing has happened."

And...

Then he told me that Camillo was dead.

On the journey from Milan to Piacenza I thought of everything.

- I thought of a car disaster. - Me too.

A terrible accident, and he was dead, but...

I thought about all,

the one thing I didn't think about was suicide.

On the 27th I was in Rome.

December 27th

of 1968

they called me and told me...

Giorgio said: "Look..."

"Camillo is dead."

They don't tell me why, or how.

I take the first train to go up to...

Piacenza.

But... I'm starting to think.

Like Piergiorgio, I thought of a car accident,

how unfortunate he had been, then "Fists in the Pocket" reveries.

Others could die instead of him...

At a certain point I arrived here, because this was the house.

So, right at the door,

Piergiorgio welcomes me and he immediately says:

"Look, Camillo killed himself."

I had never thought of this,

as well as he, when he was informed in Milan and came to Piacenza,

he never thought of this hypothesis.

Then he took me to his room, which had now become a funeral home.

He was already in the coffin.

A special memory is that he had this handkerchief

to keep his mouth shut.

I come back

on the evening of the burial or even the next day.

I arrive...

after having had a great vacation in Paris with my girlfriend.

With a smile that reached my ears,

I ring the bell.

I don't know who came to open.

Those of you who came to open had a face that is anything but laughing.

The situation became extremely embarrassing...

One says...

"There is something wrong here".

Certainly something was wrong.

We quickly got to the point, that Camillo had killed himself.

I couldn't push away the happy man's glow to take on the skin of a grieving man.

I couldn't do it.

So in the morning...

I woke up, evidently I was very embarrassed.

At that point mom... took me by the hand

and she brought me in Camillo's room where he was deposed.

Yes, yes.

In this room there was a bad smell of flowers.

At that point I finally...

There was a moment of liberation, I started to cry.

I cried out loud, I hugged my mom and...

So I went back... I came back.

We arrived there the same evening.

I know that your brother or your mother,

but I don't remember and don't make assumptions,

they said: "We know you had this affair with Camillo."

"We would like you to have Camillo's car."

My sister said no, then she went to the funeral.

I don't think she was present there ever,

also because she expected from your part

to know something more.

If you've been with Camillo a long time...

We were kids, two or three years old then, they were not few.

Instead these phone calls from you never happened.

There was a girl with a name, right?

Have you met her?

Did Tonino meet her?

This girl was...

At the funeral, we went up the ladder to get to the chapel

and I found her... I assumed it was her.

I... I was close to Tonino.

She was here, next to me.

I heard... She was blonde, I have a memory of blond hair.

She trembled, her arm trembled.

She shouted: "Camillo, why did you do it?"

Why did you do it?

I think they had found her earring in the car...

I don't even know her name, I havent seen her since.

- Your sister followed the funeral. - Yes, we were at the funeral.

- You were there too? - Of course.

My sister-in-law told me she heard your sister murmur:

- "Camillo, why did you do it?" - Yes, yes.

- It's true? - Yes, it's true.

She was very discreet, you haven't even seen her.

You didn't even say hello, nobody actually greeted her.

However, it was not about the greetings.

She just wanted to follow Camillo.

I am still convinced, even now, it was a misfortune.

A mistake, a mistake while he did some exercise.

I want to believe that it was a mistake.

- An error? - A mistake, a fatality.

- I don't think he meant it. - You don't think so.

There was not the slightest doubt on his will...

He had also left a message.

- He had left a message. - Yup.

He had left us a letter...

I held it for a long time, but when it was dangerous

to have a...

a police visit the house...

I also underwent a trial.

It was '68, '69.

I destroyed certain personal things.

They can get their hands on some papers, on books, on what they want,

but that thing... I would prefer...

I could have entrusted it to someone.

- You destroyed the card. - Yup.

- What did it say? - It was written that he...

I don't know if I transcribed it somewhere.

Anyway... he said that he would take his own life.

He also hinted at a disappointed love. However...

I remember a certain sentence: "I have failed even in love".

Maybe yes, maybe there was, but I don't remember exactly.

Yes, there was a kind of desperation.

A confession of failure

which, from a practical point of view didn't correspond with reality.

It was time where he was...

At least professionally,

he had never been so fine,

after so many events, failures, defeats...

- Had he written a note? - We didn't find anything.

Tonino checked.

- They say he had left a note. - We don't know anything.

But Tonino, poor fellow...

There was this Angela who left him.

I never believed it.

In my opinion this comparison macerated him, mangled him.

But the official truth is that,

- that Angela left him... - I understand.

In the missing letter, destroyed by Piergiorgio,

there was this sentence: "I also failed in love."

Then it was interpreted as if they had separated.

No, no. They were supposed to see each other the day after.

My sister, when she learned of Camillo's death,

she rushed to your house.

Your brother gave this letter to my sister and she read it.

It began like this: "Dear Angela,

the anguish has reached a point that I can no longer live.

I don't know if it was "I no longer have the courage to live",

but this was the meaning.

After that there were...

There were phrases addressed to you, to forgive, etc.

Then he said:

"I loved you. When you pass for Bobbio, bring me a flower.

Then you even noticed... as if she had been crying.

Yes, there were tears on the letter.

It was all wet.

- It's strange. - You must have seen the letter.

- I don't remember it. - I'm not saying the letter...

My sister and I tried to analyze.

She always told me that he felt like a failure.

- Compared to what? To the brothers? - The wrong job.

All the brothers were important but not him...

In my opinion he perceived that you had no respect for him.

He always said, "My brother has become a star."

My sister used to tell him: "But you are more beautiful."

It's true.

This was also unexpected for her.

Such an end...

- Absolutely unexpected. - Shocking for everyone.

- In fact there is this continuation... - Even physical suffering?

She had asthma for all her life.

She had adopted, in order not to breathe,

the attitude of suffering, suffocation, by Camillo.

Desperate mothers don't accept it.

How can it be accepted?

- What if she goes crazy? - She won't go crazy.

Mum entered a phase...

She said: "I understand anyone who takes drugs."

"Put me in an institution, put me in a hospice."

She remembered that in her childhood,

there was a woman who got drunk because she had sorrows.

She was also despised by her.

She said, "Now I understand you and I regret having despised it."

"There are situations in which

the only thing to do is to take drugs, to get drunk."

I remember, a year or two later,

to have accompanied her at the Bobbio cemetery.

She did not want to go up.

She said, "He doesn't want me, He rejects me."

- She felt it against her. - Against her.

Well, it was...

She was right.

In a sense... She is a mother!

If you kill a child, it's an act...

It should have been said...

If she did this thing, what a deep pit of misery,

of pain, for how many years...

And yet this woman was thinking about the flames of hell!

It was necessary to falsify our attitude.

"It's not true, he didn't commit suicide."

A theater.

We had to exclude the flames of hell.

- She believed in the flames of hell. - Of course.

What a horrible thing! We are in '68...

- Yes, in '68. - We are in '68

and she is still at home, representing an ancient religiosity,

the biblical horror, the horror of the Old Testament.

We made up dreams and a faith we didn't have

trying to support the desperate pain of our mother.

This concern of the mother

can on the one hand have appropriate motivations,

but it seems a bit exaggerated to me.

This tragic fact

has left deep marks within each of you.

I'm not in a bad place, I don't burn.

I'm not cold, I'm not hungry, I'm not hot, I'm not thirsty.

I'm not angry with anyone, I don't want to take revenge.

I'm here to say it.

If Giovanni feels guilty, all the worse for him.

Where are you? How are you?

Are you OK? Do you need anything?

I don't need anything, don't worry.

Mom... won't you forget me?

Never, never, never... Never!

We made up that it had been an accident or something.

It had been a macabre game.

Or he's lost his mind, poor thing. He can't be blamed if he goes mad.

Other people who knew about theology,

maybe they were trying to explain... Forget about it!

The flames of hell were a metaphorical thing.

For salvation, if she believed in heaven,

we told her that Camillo had gone to heaven.

Even the priests were telling it.

There were also those who said:

"You know, with time you get used to everything".

Even to fire... "You make the callus".

To eternity!

The Religion Hour (My Mother's Smile), 2002

Someone says to mom: "I dreamed about him."

"He was happy, serene, in a celestial climate".

"So he's safe."

Then we dreamed of Camillo that he was happy.

This amazes me a lot.

All the memories of Camillo...

Years later, I dreamed of you and Camillo as happy teenagers.

- Years later? - Yup.

Immediately, that night...

I dreamed of Camillo in a boreal light.

Boreal?

He was in Saharan uniform, all smiling.

I told my mom, but she saw everything uglier.

The pain of a mother in such a situation

is absolutely immeasurable.

But it is an expression of love.

The pain is immeasurable, but...

I withdraw the word.

In my opinion it is commensurate with love.

And...

And in love, the pain is sublimated.

There I would say that even on a human level

you can reach dimensions that are beyond the human.

Clearly Camillo was in crisis, he harbored terrible intentions.

The fact that I didn't notice, while living...

This has... left me with a sense of guilt.

A strong sense of guilt.

I felt on myself a superficiality.

Not having understood the depth of his pain

and having thought, just bureaucratically,

in a very traditional way,

that having settled down he had arranged everything.

I do not want

to reduce my responsibilities.

The responsibilities were different.

I'm interested in recognizing mine.

Then, all the other members of the family

have underestimated this.

When you lived with a twin brother for 29 years

it is clear that the question, if you are not superficial or false, is:

"But...I didn't understand anything."

Piergiorgio was a great intellectual, he always went around,

he also brought writers and poets here.

He lived in the house.

But he didn't understand anything.

Our mother, with all of her faith, did not understand.

The two poor sisters...

No one had assessed the danger of that depression.

All of us brothers lived a life...

...of dry unhappiness.

The basic things were all there, but at the level of affections,

there was just a desert.

Everyone in this desert was trying to survive.

Survive in this sense.

I consider you,

strangely, a great apologist of faith.

- What do you mean? - Even if you use metaphors,

you made a series of films related to family life

and difficulties of family life

which can be compared to the paintings,

present also in this chapel, of the Via Crucis.

Then you arrive on the summit of Calvary

where is this madman,

a resounding blasphemer.

A priest played him

as the equivalent of Jesus' cry: "My God, why have you forsaken me?"

Holy shit!

Damn!

My guilt, also towards Camillo,

is that I just didn't love him enough.

Maybe he didn't love me, but deep down I was stronger than him.

This is my suffering.

Maybe this is the reason why, old enough, not decrepit,

it came to my mind, before dying,

to represent or in any case remember this tragedy.

With your movies you gave me the chance

to see some things inside of you.

I believe they are good things.

They are like...

Like medicines, from time to time...

From time to time you adopt, you invent and adopt...

To heal wounds.

I take care of your "depth".

Maybe you don't know it, but you are my penitent.

Through the screen, as if it were the grate of a confessional,

I heard what he was saying to me as the penitent,

through that movie he was confessing to me.

- Were you my confessor? - I use an obvious metaphor.

It is so close to reality that...

You could get down on your knees and I could give you absolution

because you have already made the confession

and repeated it on many occasions.

I could condone penance, I could do it for you.

I am very worried about the future.

Where will we be?

Where are we going to end up?

Don't you believe in the afterlife?

Don't you believe in the afterlife?

- I don't think I'll see... - The dead?

I believe in religion, in God.

My wish would be to see again mom and dad

because I still miss them and I'd like to join them.

But, I do not think so,

because we will be billions and billions.

How will we find mom and dad?

This is my biggest wish.

Don't see God... I don't care much.

Mom, Camillo, Tonino and Paolo, all my relatives.

- The family. - Yes, the family.

Finding the family.

I don't care about others, I'm not interested in saints.

MARX CAN WAIT

English subtitles by Fortunella for KG