Adriano Tardiolo is really good in this biblically apt story of the young “Lazzaro”. He’s a generous-spirited young man who energetically helps out in his community - one under the thumb of the uncaring dominatrix “Marchesa” (Nicoletta Braschi) who treats this agrarian community little better than the animals she describes them as. She has a teenage son “Tancredi” (Luca Chikovani) who, though spoiled, has a bit of a rebellious streak and so when he befriends “Lazzaro” and discovers the young man’s hilltop hideaway, he decides to abscond from his mother and feign a kidnapping. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his mother sees through his wheeze and declines to pay up the ransom but that stalling has the benefit of allowing these two young men to establish what they hope will be an indelible friendship. Then “Lazzaro” takes a bit of a tumble and when he awakens, nothing is as it was. For all but him, decades have gone by and it’s only a chance encounter with childhood friend “Antonia” (Agnese Graziani) and her family of somewhat understandably sceptical scrap merchants and petty thieves that offers him a chance of a new life in the city. He is shy and honest so doesn’t readily fit into their community but she won’t allow them throw him onto the streets even if she reckons he’s pretty useless, too. It’s pretty clear to everyone that all he really wants is to find his friend - but what chance now? This mixes a culture of cruel, venal, exploitation with a delicate religiosity and that turns out to be quite a poignant combination as events unravel in the latter part of the film. Tardiolo hasn’t a great deal of dialogue, indeed there isn’t really that much here at all, and that works well. It’s presented as something akin to parables concerning kindness, do unto others, reap what you sow kind of thing, before a denouement that is both ghastly and yet somehow affirmatively symbolic. What does it mean to be human in a sense of humanity rather than chemical engineering? What does set us apart from the animals? Superstition, faith, love, fear, music, decency? Lots of questions posed amongst the simplicity here and it’s delicately delivered and engagingly thought-provoking at times.
