The shape of the landscape in the cinema of Matteo Garrone: A review article of Terra di mezzo (Land in Between)

Abstract

In Matteo Garrone’s filmography, the choice of locations is always determined by a marked interest in physical reality, approached through an authorial perspective aimed at representing the coordinates of a complex system of human relations and the signs of the exercise of power, in its multiple declinations. In Terra di mezzo (1996) Garrone investigates the Pasolinian space of the Roman suburbs, now populated by Nigerian prostitutes and unemployed Albanians. The filmmaker’s gaze here traces fragments of existence in the forms of an excessive, unfinished and oppressive landscape. In this context, the acceleration towards indefiniteness takes on a clear allegorical value, explicitly referring to the condition of precarious impermanence experienced by the protagonists. This article intends to highlight the most significant characteristics of the authorial work on the forms of the natural and human landscape: their selection, the tendency to their allusive and paradigmatic over-signification, the presence, in them, of the lesson of the models.