Review: Reality (2012)

Cast: Aniello Arena, Paolo Minaccioni, Loredana Simioli
Director: Matteo Garrone
Country: Italy | France
Genre: Comedy | Drama
Official Trailer: Here

Editor’s Note: Reality opens in limited release today, March 15th. If you’ve already seen the film we’d love to hear your thoughts on it, or if you’re looking forward to seeing it this weekend, please tell us in the comments section below or in our new Next Projection Forums.

It’s easy to be cynical about reality television. The crass commercialism it comes cloaked in; the lewd exploitation it often bases itself on; the sheer vapidity and lowest-common-denominator pandering of its enterprise: these factors and more make it among the easier of targets for sneering glances and snide remarks. What’s harder to do, and all the more impressive when accomplished successfully, is to say something meaningful about reality TV and its connection to our lives and our society. Matteo Garrone does just that with Reality—the follow-up to his breakthrough 2008 success with Gomorrah—and the character of Luciano, a husband, father, and humble fishmonger whose desire to land a place on the latest season of Big Brother gradually comes to engulf his life.

The dichotomy between reality and fantasy is brilliantly maintained by Garrone at every turn; here establishing the little details of Luciano’s life and town, there indulging in absurdist comedy, he is perpetually defining and defying the very idea of realism, entrenching every last aspect of the film in his central thematic discourse.

How fitting that such an observance on the fragile nature of reality and our perception thereof should emerge from the country which gave us neorealism. Garrone invokes the spirit of that movement in his sweeping opening shot, a stunning unbroken take that soars down from the clouds to the streets, trailing a horse-drawn carriage as it moves down a modern road, its vibrant colours and the fantastical score only making stranger the fairytale anachronism of the scene. The dichotomy between reality and fantasy is brilliantly maintained by Garrone at every turn; here establishing the little details of Luciano’s life and town, there indulging in absurdist comedy, he is perpetually defining and defying the very idea of realism, entrenching every last aspect of the film in his central thematic discourse.

The relevance of that discourse is perhaps the biggest critique to be levelled against the film, its arrival to the party where reality TV is concerned exceeding even the bounds of fashionable lateness. Big Brother, after all, has existed in a variety of international versions for almost fifteen years now, does Garrone’s tardy uptake not render his opinion hopelessly outdated? Where Reality earns its potency, chiefly, is in its refusal to resign itself solely to this sort of observation: nominally a take on the issue of reality in crisis, the film in fact concerns itself with this in part only. Garrone contorts the narrative to reflect issues beyond the bounds of television, a mid-film effort by Luciano’s family to “cure” him of his obsession with religion wryly twisting the satire toward new ends. Viewing Luciano primarily as a pathetic creation, the audience is faced by Garrone with accusative—or at least inquisitive—eyes, asked to consider just why their own methods of escape are so superior to Luciano’s.

Arena is a comic performer of immense talent, charismatically commanding the attention of his audience and reducing them to fitful laughs with just the slightest of tics and idiosyncrasies.

There’s a certain quality to his face, an almost childlike innocence and wonder as he floats through the world, as though seeing it and all the everyday wonders within for the very first time. Much of this might be attributed to Aniello Arena himself: imprisoned since 1991 for a Mafia triple-homicide, he filmed his role on day releases. Garrone’s decision to pursue so undoubtedly troublesome a course of shooting earns rich reward; Arena is a comic performer of immense talent, charismatically commanding the attention of his audience and reducing them to fitful laughs with just the slightest of tics and idiosyncrasies. His determination and the absurd lengths he goes to in pursuit of his dream are the source of much comedy throughout the film, yet as the narrative progresses and the obsession deepens, his fixated smile yields to the disconcerting glare of a man possessed by delusion, the constant grin losing its cuteness and becoming more indicative of a hopelessly deranged mind.

Invariably labelled a comedy, Reality occupies a far more complex tonal register than such a simple generic tag suggests: often even strangely horrific, it defies such easy classification, tweaking a multitude of genres in pursuit of the observances it makes of our world and the relationship we share with it. Luciano’s story is a startling inversion of The Truman Show in many respects: he desperately tries to burst forth into the same bubble from which Truman was so determined to escape, deliberately attempting to escape truth and pry his way instead into the comfortable embrace of fabrication. For all the many laughs it elicits along the way, Garrone has not so much created a comedy here as he has a troublesome tragedy that speaks to each of us, to the difficult issues of life we wish we could avoid facing, to the fictions we consume ourselves in to hide from reality.

• Bio
• Latest Posts

Ronan Doyle

Director of Movies On Demand & Sr. Staff Film Critic at Next Projection

Having spent the vast majority of my life sharing in the all too prevalent belief than cinema is merely dumbed-down weekend escapism for the masses, I was lucky enough to turn on a television at the exact right moment to have my perspectives on the medium completely transformed. Those first two and a half hours marked the beginning of a new life revolving around—maybe even depending upon—the screen and the depth of artistry, intellectual stimulation, and emotional exhilaration it can provide.

Latest posts by Ronan Doyle (see all)

• TIFF’s TOGA! The Reinvention of American Comedy Review: Airplane! (1980) - August 8, 2013
• Locarno Review: The Dirties (2013) - August 8, 2013
• This Week on Demand: 04/08/02013 - August 7, 2013