Caro diario

Caro diario
Dear Diary

Director Nanni Moretti goes on three disparate journeys. First, he rides through Rome on a Vespa. Next, he and his friend, Gerardo, tour the Aeolian Islands searching for a peaceful place to write. Finally, Moretti, hampered by a skin rash, goes from doctor to doctor looking for the right diagnosis.

EN

“If Caro diario is about the quest for an authentic language of film, one that rejects the antiliteralism of contemporary critical jargon, and insists on its referent in the world, then Moretti’s answer is to return to the body in all its material specificity, to acknowledge it as the single, indivisible unit that lay in the hospital bed of a cancer ward”

Millicent Marcus1

 

“If the airy simplicity and open-ended freedom of Moretti’s method leave the viewer with an unexpectedly weighty and mysteriously unified impression – at once buoyant and melancholy, witty and wise – this may be because, unlike most pictures, this one puts us in touch with another human being. And as Montaigne, the granddaddy of all personal essayists, put it, ‘Every man has within himself the entire human condition.’”

Jonathan Rosenbaum2

  • 1Millicent Marcus, “Caro Diario and the Cinematic Body of Nanni Moretti,” Italica 73, no. 2 (1996): 244.
  • 2Jonathan Rosenbaum, “Getting Personal,” The Chicago Reader, December 1994.

NL

“Voor Moretti naar de Eolische eilanden vertrekt om er zijn scenario te schrijven, gidsen films hem op zijn tocht zonder bestemming. Onvermijdelijk voert hij ons terug naar alle andere keren dat we achterop hebben gezeten in de cinema: met een motorbende de nacht veroverend aan het eind van Roma, op de Vespa tussen George Saunders, Ingrid Bergman en hun uiteenvallend huwelijk in Viaggio in Italia, door de straten van Seraing achterop bij Bruno de gestolen handtas leegmakend in L’enfant, maar evengoed onze bestuurder net zo hard vastklemmend als Hossein Sabzian in Close-Up.”

Rasmus Van Heddeghem1

  • 1Rasmus Van Heddeghem, “Prisma #25,” Sabzian, December 2018.
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UPDATED ON 12.04.2023