Venerable Italian director Marco Bellocchio opens his grand historical epic Kidnapped in a rather quiet manner, just a brief glimpse of a Jewish family in 1850s Bologna praying by their baby’s bedside, observed by their Christian maid. Yet, once the full story of betrayal and tragedy has unfolded, its true meaning is resounding; a brief yet oh-so-efficient looks at the fears that have hounded European Jews for millennia – that even behind closed doors and commanding some modest wealth, the Christians of the continent just cannot wait to pounce. It’s a poignant beginning to this grand, moving, and rollickingly entertaining telling of the true story of the kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, a story that balances intimate stakes of family and faith with pivotal turning points in the history of Italy, Catholicism, and Judaism.
After we briefly meet him as a baby, we’re introduced to the six year old Edgardo (a remarkable performance from the very young Enea Sala) as he plays with his many brothers. Very soon, though (Kidnapped moves lightning fast throughout its 130-ish minute runtime), Catholic enforcers have broken into the Mortara home and forcibly abducted Edgardo. See, in 1858, Bologna was still under the control of the Papal States, where the Pope ruled not just as a religious leader, but also a king and, based on testimony from the Mortaras’ Christian maid that she secretly baptised Edgardo, the ruling Church essentially considered the boy their property.
From here we see Edgardo’s parents – caring but easily defeated father Salomone (Fausto Russo Alesi) and rageful but broken mother Marianna (Barbara Ronchi) – in their painfully futile attempts to get their son back, while Edgardo is swiftly and effectively brainwashed by the Church into becoming Catholic. It’s a shockingly swift process and though Bellocchio conducts this film in a profoundly tasteful manner throughout, this hold that the priesthood is able to exert over children does bring to mind many unsavoury headlines.
In fact, Bellocchio treats this story as, in many ways, a preamble to the antisemitism that would define the first half of the 20th Century in Europe. Parallels abound, from the Pope here being Pius IX (Pius XII would be the Pope who essentially gave his blessing to Hitler to conduct the Holocaust), to a priest later on trial for the kidnapping defending himself as ‘just following orders’. It provides a crucial focus to the story, which otherwise – in the way that history often does – resists an easy, movie-friendly resolution, as the grown up Edgardo (Leonardo Maltese) becomes and remains a militant Catholic true believer.
The 20 years or so of Edgardo’s life that Kidnapped follows also happen to be some of the most important decades of Italian history, seeing the launching and completion of the ‘Risorgimento’, a campaign to unite the disparate states of Italy into one, relatively secular, nation. Though the budget here sometimes fails to truly deliver the spectacle, we do get to see some key moments of revolution and battle – if nothing else, this is a fascinating history lesson with plenty of lovely shots in the quieter (and, perhaps, cheaper) moments.
Thankfully, there’s also more to Kidnapped than that, including a surprisingly endearing sense of fun. A lot of this is provided by Paolo Pierobon’s exceptional panto villain performance as Pius IX, playing him as a bigoted, swivel-eyed loon – more Denethor from Lord of the Rings than a dignified vessel of the divine. It’s a fantastic choice, adding some broad humour that actually, in its creepiness, elevates the seriousness elsewhere rather than undermining it. When Kidnapped does want to go for the heartstrings, it absolutely retains that power, particularly in three separate reunion scenes, spaced out across the years, between Edgardo and his parents, all of which put a lump in your throat while the final one is an absolute showstopper, years of stifled emotion and resentments pouring out.
Though the latter third of the film can feel rather thinly sketched at times, Kidnapped is a mostly fantastic trip into the past; informative while still being pacey, fun and funny while still commanding an air of importance. Seven or eight years ago, Steven Spielberg was attached to this story, even going so far as to cast Oscar Isaac and Mark Rylance (who would have played the Pope) before the project fell apart. It’s certainly a lost project I mourn, especially as Spielberg’s replacement film was the rather lousy The Post, but Bellocchio’s version is still one to celebrate.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 