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| I'm Not Scared (Io Non Ho Paura) |
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  (8/10)
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Runtime: 108 |
| Public Rating: 7.75 (16 votes) |
Director: Gabriele Salvatores |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: drama, thriller |
Year: 2003 |
| Writer(s): Niccolò Ammaniti (novel), Niccolò Ammaniti (screenplay) and Francesca Marciano (screenplay) |
| Distributor: Miramax |
| Reviewed by: Avril Carruthers |
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Produced by Marco Chimenz, Giovanni Stabilini, Maurizio Totti, Riccardo Tozzi.
Starring Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Dino Abbrescia, Giorgio Careccia, Giuseppe Cristiano, Mattia Di Pierro, Diego Abatantuono.
An unsentimental and evocative child’s eye view of a mystery which becomes a thriller, I’m Not Scared is a potent film from Italian director Gabriele Salvatores. Michele (Giuseppe Cristiano) is a 10-year-old Italian boy who lives in Southern rural Italy with his parents and his little sister Maria (Giulia Matturo). It is 1978 and the family, indeed the whole community, is poor. One day Michele discovers a secret so dreadful that his entire world, and his understanding of the people closest to him, are shaken and reshaped.
The film’s power is in its sensitive portrayal of a child coming to grips with something he cannot understand. We approach the mystery on his level, with all the personal portents and symbols a child uses to make sense of his environment. Between a child’s oblivious ignorance and the curiosity which reveals the world to him in all its ambivalence there is a razor’s edge. The film places this sharp awakening in the context of continuing obedience to adults or choosing subversive autonomous action, without any clear indication to Michele himself, due to his limited understanding, of what is best.
There are secrets adults keep from children. There are secrets children, with their instinct for self-preservation, must keep from adults. I’m Not Scared deals with fear and survival, and how an individual becomes aware of complex broader applications of safety and survival than those affecting just oneself.
The film begins underground. Water drips in the dark. Chalked words on a rocky wall spell ‘Io non ho paura’ (I’m not scared). Then the sound of the wind and exposed tree roots lead us to the surface and a brilliantly sunlit field of wheat. A black crow appears more as an omen than merely part of the scenery. Among the gang of children playing boisterously in the fields, Michele, a boy who has been taught to look after his little sister Maria, feels compelled to intervene when a humiliating forfeit is exacted from a playmate by the bully of the group.
Retrieving his sister’s lost glasses while the rest of the group goes home, Michele finds that a piece of corrugated iron lying innocuously on the ground covers a deep hole. Expecting to find perhaps a cave filled with gold and guns, he is shocked to see a small human foot partly covered by sackcloth. He hurtles away on his bicycle and we can feel the thudding of his heart before he crashes and falls unconscious. Alternating terror and curiosity has Michele returning several times, each time with more courage. He finds that the boy in the hole, Filippo (Mattia Di Pierro), is chained to his prison. Not understanding, Michele tells no-one.
The enormity of Michele’s secret sets him apart from the other kids, and at first he no longer wants to play with them. A decision to trust his friend Salvatore (Stefano Biase) ends in betrayal. In addition, his somewhat uneasy relationship with his traditionally patriarchal father Pino (Dino Abbrescia) begins to disintegrate. It’s not helped by the arrival in the family home of a mysterious Albanian stranger, Sergio (Diego Abatantuono) and the hot-tempered aggression of a young village man, Felice (Giorgio Careccia). The underlying fear and distrust Michele has of his father becomes more evident as the film highlights the natural opposition between children and adults.
True to the experience of childhood, present time is accepted as ‘always’. The boy in the hole doesn’t know how he got there or that he’s been kidnapped, as Michele’s surreptitious inquiries have uncovered. His explanation is that he’s in this hole because he’s dead. True also to childhood, the boys form a friendship based on similarities, since Michele is also being kept in the dark. Oblivious to Filippo’s kidnapped state they play in the brilliant sunshine and then the boy returns unquestioningly to his prison, for fear of incurring the consequences if they are found out. But chaos has been let out of the hole and Michele and his parents must choose, finally, a course of action dependent on what they value most. Nevertheless, the tension of the film is such that nothing is predictable.
Authentic performances by Giuseppe Cristiano and Mattia Di Pierro as the two 10-year-olds as well as by little Giulia Matturo and Dino Abbrescia and Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, who play Michele’s sister and parents, are well supported by the memorable cinematography of Italo Petriccione. Wide expanses of wheatfields and sky are contrasted against the powerful omens of childhood – a dead chicken, crows, ants and flies, and the desperate magic of a child singing for protection to the beasts of the night. There is a constant feeling of danger below the surface. I’m Not Scared is a haunting tale which, if you let it, will bring back memories of childhood’s terrors, uncertainties and courage based on an innate knowledge of what is right.
© Avril Carruthers, 2nd June 2004
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