Ciao Professore

In Ciao Professore, I found that all the issues were kind of tied together. Things like education, poverty, work conditions, and corruption all had something to do with each other. The town the teacher is sent to it obviously poor, and the kids are needed to work to help support their families. I think if one thing was fixed in the town, like poverty, everything would follow suit. The town would afford better education and get the kids off the streets and out of work.Without poverty, there would be no need for Mimi the janitor to run the school, charging prices on basic school supplies so the school can actually get money.

            This film is clearly tragic because we see children living in poverty with little education. We see these kids working to support and take care of their families instead of going to school. Some are even joining gangs to have something. But what makes it funny is seeing the kids act so adult for their age. For instance, the kids start swearing at each other when they get mad. They’re able to come up with some pretty aggressive curses for third graders.

            Since we haven’t seen the whole film yet, I can’t give a full answer to question three. Marco Sperelli is trying to change the school in very subtle ways. It’s almost like he trying to slowly take over from Mimi. He goes to the principal for her to help, but she basically supports Mimi. So Marco is trying to take over small things, like ringing the bell when Mimi is on the phone.

            When he talks to the principal about the conditions of the school, he learns that the government will not send them money. He learns that since the government is not supporting them, they need to make do with how they are now, and they both need to deal with it.

Gomorrah

The movie “Gomorrah” was hard to follow. I didn’t really know what it was about before I watched it. I only knew it was a crime drama with different story lines throughout the movie, like a Quentin Tarantino movie.

The story lines consist of several different characters. One is a well-known tailor who teaches a Chinese factory. Another is, or what looks like, some type of loan shark or money collector. We see him receiving and paying a few people in the beginning. Another follows a child who is trying to become part of a gang in the local ghetto. Another follows two men who run a toxic waste disposal company. Another: two young men who want to become big, famous gangsters. We see them rob other gangs of drugs and a weapon stash, and also playing out scenes from “Scarface.”

In some scenes, we can see into some aspects of Italian culture. Some may be more accurate than others. With the boy who is trying to become a gang member, we see he is very stylish, very concerned about how he looks. He wears lots of jewelry, designer clothing, even trimming his eyebrows. With his other gang members, they go out clothes shopping together.

The intensity of the gangs, however, I can’t be sure how accurate that really is. Some pretty intense actions are played out by the gangs. They are shown producing and selling a pretty large amount of drugs. And they put the gangster-to-be kids through some pretty intense trials, like shooting them with a pullet-proof vest on to see if they are tough enough. And they make the kid transport a lot of drugs along a busy street.

Throughout the movie, gang violence gradually grows more and more. It’s common knowledge to the neighborhood that a war is about to take place between rival gangs. Murders go back and forth between the two. The two wanna-be gangsters were becoming too much of a pain, so they were lured into a trap and killed.

But I guess this movie is based on the real Camorra gang in Europe. I assume now that most of this movie could be based on real facts. The intensity and grit of the gang life could have been portrayed as very real. It’s hard to realize that a gang of this magnitude could be present in Europe. We don’t think about these parts of society when we think about Italy or Europe. So far the films we’ve seen have been like fairy-tails. Up until now, they have been giving us a picturesque view of Italy. This movie shows the ugly, violent life of Italian underground.