Italian Ecocinema Beyond the Human by Elana Past

Abstract

Reviewed by: Italian Ecocinema Beyond the Human by Elana Past Matteo Gilebbi Past, Elena. Italian Ecocinema Beyond the Human. Indiana University Press, 2019, pp. 226. Elena Past's book is a fascinating and insightful examination of five Italian films through the lens of material ecocriticism, a framework that allows her—as she points out in the introduction—to read these films by engaging "both matter and meaning" and by focusing on "pressing environmental questions" (2). Past suggests that we consider ecocinema not simply as a genre that engages with ecological themes through stylistic or narrative choice, but as "an interpretive approach" that focuses on the film industry's ecological footprint, the use of nonhuman actors, and the relationship with the material places represented on screen and, most importantly, held and traversed by film casts and crews (3). Past is aware that this approach to Italian ecocinema carries binding ethical implications: by connecting films to a more-than-human world, she positions her work in a non-anthropocentric, anti-speciesist, and bio-centric perspective which questions human exceptionalism, the dominance over nonhuman animals, and the right to control and transform the environment. Therefore, her inquiry into ecocinema asks "new questions" about the physical and ecological impact of films and their condition of being enmeshed in the world (11); these questions rise, in fact, from considering films as "cyborg forms," that is, "places where naturecultures are formed, composed of light particles and technologies and interactions between human and nonhuman bodies" (12). Each of the five book chapters is a case study focusing on a single film, with a research approach unique not only to Italian film studies but also to other studies on ecocinema: Past constructs the analysis of each film by intertwining a canonical reading with interviews of film crew members and with environmental humanities theories, in particular the work of Serenella Iovino, Rosi Braidotti, Matthew Calarco, Donna Haraway, Roberto Marchesini, Timothy Morton, and Cary Wolfe. This allows for a compelling analysis that connects the lived experience of the people involved in the actual, physical making of the film, with the current speculative research in ecocriticism, posthumanism, and environmental philosophy. [End Page 359] The first chapter focuses on Michelangelo Antonioni's Red Desert (1964) and interrogates how the film was "thoroughly entangled in the petrochemical landscape in which it was filmed, and was a byproduct of those very industries" (28). Past reads Antonioni's work as a metaphorical and material catalyst between the film story, the actors, the industry, the workers, the geographical area of Ravenna, and modern Italian society, all interconnected by their dependence on petrol and its chemical and cultural byproducts. Past interprets the film as an artifact that testifies to the "radical connectedness of all matter, while admitting the ontological and environmental crises that can result from such entanglement" (30). Therefore, in Past's study, Red Desert becomes the perfect example of "petrocinema," i.e., cinema that represents the petrochemical industry and some of its many stories while also stimulating a reflection on how this industry creates and supports cinema itself: "both in form and subject, Red Desert traces the shape of this dynamic landscape" where hydrocarbons "drive nearly every aspect of contemporary life" (35, 36). One of the most interesting conclusions drawn by Past is that, by focusing on the geological origin of fuel, Red Desert allows a non-anthropocentric gaze on dilated geological time, juxtaposed to the dominant anthropocentric view of the compressed time of modern Italy and its accelerating economic growth. In other words, Red Desert triggers an epistemological and ontological shift from the fast time of neocapitalism to the slow time of environmental consciousness, while contemplating the realization that the film, like the industry it represents, emits toxins and endangered the biosphere, since cinema itself is a byproduct of petrol that therefore enables the negative environmental effects of the petrochemical industry. In the second chapter, Past continues her analysis of the environmental footprint of both the economy and cinema by collecting the stories of crew members of Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah (2008). They recount how making this film meant "getting dirty" with the wasteful film production process, with Campania's waste management crisis, and...