Gomorrah launches the viewer headfirst into the criminal underworld of Naples, where disputes are settled with bullets. The feuding factions of the Camorra crime syndicate affect everyone in their wake, and tinge even the beautiful southern Italian canals a murky brown. Yet Matteo Garrone’s film also has a profound interest in the ways life survives amongst the chaos, with poignant vignettes of the people for whom bloody vengeance is an everyday occurrence. Shots of youths breaking into song and children playing in concrete pyramids interspersed within the gloomy meetings of gangsters and ruthless shootouts hit with intensity as a result of cinematographer Marco Onorato, who effortlessly captures the desolation of the sunbleached landscape. Gomorrah’s true strength is that, by showing the deadly consequences to its characters’ actions, it mercilessly deconstructs the allure, bred by its contemporary films, of organised crime. Its message is resolute: such a vice must not be taken lightly.
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