Lwhere half of Italian cinema was filmed, on the beach with the famous Circeo promontory in the background – our mountain Paramount, but without the stars as a diadem – the events of The Order of Timelast film by Liliana Cavani. Present at Venice 80 in the out of competition section and in the edition that crowns the director with a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.
the set, a villa with a pool furnished with impeccable taste that combines the dishes with the fabric of the sofasvintage wood with lights dimmed by ecru lampshades, gathers a group of friends, accomplices, lovers destabilized by a meteorite (baptized anaconda) which seems to point straight at the Earth. Even there is definitive certainty of the impact there is not; this “stone” (or “stone”) 1920 meters long in fact, it travels so fast that the calculations of the experts are constantly changing.
The order of timethe plot and the cast
What is certain is that – with each new analysis – the chances of a collision are getting higher and higher, up to one in twenty. The most concerned is isabel (Mariana Tomayo), the Peruvian maid who was informed about the facts by her relatives, and who wants to go home immediately to her son. While Henry (Edward Leo)being physical, is inundated with questions of Elsa (Claudia Gerini), Pietro (Alessandro Gassman), Paola (Ksenia Rappoport), Viktor (Richard Samuel), Greta (Valentina Cervi), Jacob (Fabrizio Rongione), Jasmine (Angeliqa Devi) and Giulia (Francesca Inaudi). Who, when the astronomical picture is clear, that is that it would be an unequivocal extinction, begin to reflect.
The cast of “The Order of Time”. From left to right: Ksenia Rappoport, Richard Sammel, Francesca Inaudi, Claudia Gerini, Valentina Cervi, Fabrizio. (Vision Distribution)
Thoughtful but with books in hand and herbal teas, with vague senses of anguish and indignation of the world – if there are denials of the holocaust and climate change, let alone this asteroid, they say. Including them though, that of Enrico which gives no consolations (the catastrophic event would be equal to the extinction of the dinosaurs), they don’t trust it so much. How can he be so sure if the stock market is doing very well, says happily Viktor, the businessman who will pay dearly for his greed.
Apart from him, however, the idea of the end of the world is gradually accepted by the whole group, including poor Elsa (50 years old in the days of the apocalypse). And, at this point, the core of The Order of Time – loosely based on the book of the same name by Charles Rovelliconsultant to the film – obviously moves on to the drama of the time that remains. On what to do with it and if what was spent in the past was, all things considered, fruitful.
The thoughtful middle class grappling with the end of the world
Unfortunately, quick considerations and philosophies, Giulia (also a physicist) who goes to a nun played by Angela Molina to have an opinion different from science, demonstrations of affection and j’accuse – not to mention the genre scenes The Big Chill devitalized by the same pathos (a fragment of Charlie Chaplin on TV and the collective dance on Dance me till the end of love Of Leonard Cohen) – they never raise the temperature of the story, which stagnates in an exhausted rebound of events where fear is absentas indeed a mad joy waiting for the explosion.
Practically a Melancholia by Lars von Trier without the nightmare of the devastating cosmos and the tightening stomach. Without remedial acts and rash gestures. Or escapes into the irrational. That even when there are, they are coldly exposed: Sister Raffaella describing prayer as the most powerful thing in impotence. Beautiful, but at home, better 4 fingers of vodka or the herb of Anna, Elsa and Pietro’s daughter, rather than a profound analysis. But without exaggerating.
From left to right the cast of “L’Ordine del tempo” on the film’s red carpet: Edoardo Leo, Claudia Gerini, Valentina Cervi, Francesca Inaudi, Kseniya Rappoport, Director of the festival Alberto Barbera, Liliana Cavani, Carlo Rovelli, Richard Sammel . (Getty Images)
In short, this end of the world brought (maybe yes, maybe not) by the Anaconda meteorite is that of the reflective middle class who talk about the Nobel and the difference between Chronos and Kairos. Serious professionals who, with their gossip, seem to have the power to slow down the slowest meteorite among those that travel the fastest (Enrico docet). A class that in Sabaudia, a place of intellectuals on the mend (Moravia and Pasolini above all), evidently manages to absorb without trauma even the most inexorable news there can be.
The appreciable work of Liliana on the group of actors remains, reunited in a tour that combined exchanges of views and screenplay revisions, said the director at a press conference. A set that for many of them was a crash course in work, friendship and – as for Ksenia Rappoport (actress born in Leningrad who plays Paola) – a salvation from a difficult period. Illustrated thus: «This film helped me to survive. I am very grateful to Liliana. You dream of a son, you imagine him, you give him birth, you make him grow, you feed him, you educate him in his adolescence, then he finally becomes a man, but he has to leave for the war and two days he dies. For me The Order of Timetoday, is a son at war».
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