by Mark Demetrius
Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Pierfrancesco Favino, Massimiliano Rossi, Johan Heldenbergh, Arturo Muselli
Intro:
… well worth seeing …
The most immediate and abiding quality in this film is that it simply looks fantastic. It would be hard to exaggerate just how painterly and exquisite the cinematography is. But there’s plenty of gritty substance and tension to go with the style, because the time is October 1940, and the drama concerns the Italian Royal Navy submarine Cappellini as it goes about its wartime business in the Atlantic Ocean.
The captain, Salvatore Todaro (Pierfrancesco Favino), is a rugged-looking man with a steely presence and an incongruous penchant for lyrical turns of phrase. The script is often culturally literate, and very effective when it gives us (via voice-overs) snatches of the sailors’ private thoughts — many of them naturally involving the constant fear of death.
This is gripping stuff, and the smouldering intensity is all the greater because dramatic set-pieces are alternated with slow build-ups. There’s a ‘nail-biting’ scene where one of the crew goes out into the water to try and defuse some mines. And there are others where everyone faces annihilation …
There is, unfortunately, one serious weakness here, and that is the element of whitewashing sentimentality. When Todaro is asked why he and his crew did something extremely noble, selfless and brave, he replies “Because we are Italian”. That would be a ludicrous assertion regardless of what nationality was involved, but it’s all the more ridiculous given that the government of the day was Mussolini’s fascists — a regime not known for its decency and abhorrence of violence.
Still, this is after all a true story, and Comandante is pretty impressive on balance and well worth seeing. Not to mention hearing: the score by Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja is appropriately dramatic and exciting.
