I'm Not Scared (2003)
Directed by Gabriele Salvatores

Film Review

Niccolò Ammaniti's best-selling novel I'm Not Scared (a.k.a. Io non ho paura) is effortlessly transposed to the big screen by Oscar-winning director Gabriele Salvatores in this brutal but totally absorbing coming-of-age drama, set during Italy's Anni di piombo (Years of the Bullet) in the 1970s, a time when terrorism and kidnapping were rife in the country.  With Ammaniti (one of Italy's leading writers) contributing to the screenplay, the film is every bit as effective as the novel in portraying the painful transition from childhood to adulthood.  Whilst the story is hardly original (there is much to connect it with Bryan Forbes' 1961 film Whistle Down the Wind) it is a compelling piece, the most astute and poignant examination of a child's loss of innocence, thanks to its flawless screenplay and a mesmeric central performance from first-time child actor Giuseppe Cristiano.

The main strength of Ammaniti's remarkable short novel is that it compels its reader to see the world through the eyes of a 10-year-old boy.  Things that would appear banal from an adult's point-of-view are presented as strange and threatening, and with his simple and direct prose Ammaniti constantly reminds us just what a fearful and lonely place childhood is.  The film achieves a similar effect, by using cinematic devices that contribute to the illusion of a child's perspective: the palette is dominated by primary colours, the camera is held close to the ground, adults are mostly seen from a low angle, tiny creatures that a grown-up would miss are frequently glimpsed and heard in the foreground.  So effectively does Salvatores put his audience in the shoes of a solitary young boy that, as you watch the film, you really do feel as if you are re-living those last traumatic days of childhood.

There are few things more brutal and heartrending than the experience of seeing a child's innocence being ripped from his grasp.  I'm Not Scared begins with the most evocative portrait of childhood insouciance, a gang of children playing contentedly in a sun-drenched field of wheat that looks like a series of Monet paintings brought to life.  But almost immediately we can sense the presence of the demonic serpent in this lush garden of Eden.  A little girl is cajoled into taking down her skirt and the central protagonist, Michele, is soon risking his neck in a dangerous dare game amid the evil detritus of a house that looks like the set of an American horror film.  Then there is the first real shock: Michele's discovery of a ghoul in a hole in the ground.  The silk cocoon of childhood is suddenly ripped and the events that follow will see it gradually torn from Michele as he slowly comes to realise that everything he has experienced so far is an illusion.  The real world is far more cruel and unjust than he could ever have imagined.

If anyone is deserving of an award for his contribution to the film it has to be Giuseppe Cristiano, who makes a compelling hero as the brave 10-year-old Michele Amitrano.  With minimal dialogue and admirable restraint, Cristiano has no difficulty projecting his character's conflicted inner feelings and he gives us what is pretty rare in cinema nowadays, a totally authentic portrayal of a child as he makes his first tentative steps towards adulthood.   Just as the world around Michele is visibly transformed as the drama unravels (becoming a much darker, uglier place, scarred by man's reckless greed and stupidity), so he himself changes and acquires a maturity that allows him to deal with the challenges that come his way.  In the end, Michele is able to make the moral choice that frees him from the mire of corruption into which his father has been drawn.  By opting to save his friend, risking his own life as he does so, he takes a stand against the futile negativity of his parents' generation, a gesture of defiance that is powerfully symbolic of Italian youth's mass rejection of violence in the late 1970s.

Film Synopsis

In 1978, 10-year-old Michele Amitrano lives with his impoverished family in a small town in Southern Italy.  The acres of wheat fields in the surrounding countryside provide a happy playground for Michele and his gang.  One day, Michele and his friends come across a dilapidated farmhouse in which they play dangerous dare games.  As his friends make their way back home, Michele returns to look for his sister's mislaid glasses and discovers a hole in the ground covered with a metal sheet.  Peering into the hole, he glimpses a human leg emerging from a blanket.  As he takes a closer look, Michele is horrified by the zombie-like apparition that suddenly appears.  On his next visit, Michele realises that the creature in the hole is a boy of his own age, chained and naked.  He gives the boy food and drink, and even takes him out of the hole to play with him in the wheat fields, always taking care to return him to his underground prison.  From a television news report, Michele learns the identity of his friend: he is Filippo, a boy who has been abducted by kidnappers to extort money from his moderately wealthy family in Northern Italy.  Michele's happy summer is further tainted by the arrival of a crude man from the North, with whom he is forced to share a bedroom.  One evening, Michele overhears this man talking to his father and his friends and realises, to his horror, that they are Filippo's kidnappers...