Mark Reviews Movies: NOTTURNO

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 28, 2021

Director Gianfranco Rosi spent several years in the Middle East—specifically Syria, Iraq, Kurdistan, and Lebanon—filming the everyday lives of ordinary people. The result is Notturno, a documentary of ambitious scope but, unfortunately, limited impact.

The most intriguing thing about Rosi's movie is how determined he is to avoid what we most expect within the region: conflict and combat. The sounds of automatic gunfire are present here, echoing in the distance among the buildings of an unnamed city and rattling closer to a duck hunter as he quietly maneuvers a canoe, but even when Rosi's camera sits with groups of soldiers, there is nothing. The soldiers sit cramped in their barracks, preparing a meal, and stand watch at a military encampment.

Things have changed in the region, although one assumes that, if Rosi traveled toward the gunfire, we'd be seeing images of war, like the ones playing on a television inside a psychiatric facility, where some patients are rehearsing a play about the history of conflict in their country and the desire for stability. We don't know where or when any of these scenes are taking place. Rosi also doesn't include any titles to inform us of such information. He simply wants these people and their daily routines to speak for themselves.

They do, to various degrees. Some scenes—such as a mother visiting the prison where her son was tortured and murdered—are devastating. Others—such as another mother listening to voice messages sent by her daughter, who has been captured by ISIS—remind us that, for all of the relative peace within so many of Rosi's images, there is still pain, torment, and death being inflicted upon these people by groups and the fundamentalist ideologies they want to force on others.

Most of the movie's tableaux, though, are static, calm, and uneventful. The idea behind these scenes—that life continues, despite the nearby combat and the obvious economic hardships of, say, the family of a boy who works multiple, insecure jobs—is both encouraging and melancholy.

Notturno shows the strength of regular people, living within and through irregular times of rampant instability. The content of Rosi's documentary, then, is indispensable as a snapshot of mostly unseen or ignored parts of the present-day world. The absence of vital context, though, hinders the movie's potential power.

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