“Sand I speak in a reticent manner instead of letting myself go to an inordinate joy it is because the enthusiasm is extremely exhausting ». “Reticent” isn’t the first adjective that comes to mind when you talk to Tommaso Ragno, co-star with Pier Francesco Favino and Francesco Di Leva of NostalgiaMario Martone’s film in competition at the next Cannes Film Festival (May 17-28). This is the reason for the immoderate joy.
“My life as an actor began with Mario, the Neapolitan forge was my first home” explains. He came to school when I was studying at Paolo Grassi. He brought materials for a Greek tragedy which then toured Italy (it was 1988, the show The second generation. Martone will then also direct it in Woyzeck by Georg Büchner, ed): I was Oreste. Curious, in Nostalgia my name is Oreste. Strange connections, we talked about it. And also how Naples represents a particular form of nostalgia ».
Tommaso Ragno in Nostalgia. Photo Mario Spada
Tommaso Ragno: «Health, the entrance to the labyrinth “
You turned to Sanità.
There is Naples and there is the Sanità district. Felice and Oreste live there, they are two friends. Friends as one can only be at a young age, but theirs is a dangerous friendship, their world is that of the underworld. Then Felice leaves, Oreste stays and becomes the “king of that garbage” as he defines it. They meet again after 40 years, when Felice returns home. But if Naples is already a world, at Sanità you feel like you are in Varanasi, India.
Because? Varanasi is the city that celebrates death.
In that dimension, light and shadow mix. Such as high and low. At the Sanità there are the catacombs, you feel a sensation of descent into hell, you can feel the mythical dimension of Naples everywhere, at Palazzo Donn’Anna you feel it strongly. The genius loci della Sanità has a very powerful magnetic force, it is a city in itself. And it is really as if the catacombs were a bit of the city of the dead: you move through those ravines and suddenly you emerge in a garden. Healthcare seems to have been made on purpose to disappear. It gave me the feeling of a mineral that is at another depth, with a strong compression, an almost radioactive place. Streets, lanes, alleys, dilapidated buildings, sepulchres, altars, poverty, wealth, it’s all together. And it is that place that determines the choices of the protagonist, Health is the horizon along which the characters move, with those codes carved in stone, it is a deceptive place, it is the entrance into the labyrinth.
Tommaso Ragno in M Massimo Popolizio’s son of the century. Photo © Masiar Pasquali
He just got off the stage which he shared with Massimo Popolizio for M, the son of the centuryhas four films ready, in addition to Nostalgia, a thriving television career. Is her a second youth?
It is not a second youth, it is a second life. More and more. Even if you continue to do nonsense. But you do them better. Or even, you want to repeat them. But thank God the twenty years have passed. I would not go back there.
At the age of twenty, did you first hear that he belonged to the world he is in now?
I was lucky to start when there was no internet. You had to put your face on it, not an avatar. If there was a Peter Brook show in Paris you would take the train and go there. That was the time when an actor could do theater for up to 250-300 days a year. Your body and mind got used to that rhythm. Then that was also the moment when I met Massimo Castri, Luca Ronconi, Toni Servillo. I was lucky enough to grow up in theatrical houses, experiences that form identity in a solid way. I am a provincial boy, I grew up in Piacenza, my family had nothing to do with the theater, I tried the audition at Paolo Grassi and I went in. Before M. I hadn’t been in theater for five years, returning to the stage was simply magnificent. Also because we did it in the most complicated period, 18 people on stage, 10 technicians, 10 covid infections, including me.
In praise of boredom
How are you?
Luckily I took it after the booster and especially after I had done some work on me, on the body, which had made me stronger. I felt overweight, and at 50 I got my body used to a new way. It’s not so much a question of losing weight, but of getting back to who you are. If I could have done Benito Mussolini without the belly and the jaw, with my long hair, it is because those are freedoms that the theater can take. It seems that everything today must resemble reality, but which reality? During the pandemic we have been engulfed in TV series, even wonderful ones, but neither series nor ebooks have what we need, the “thing”. That of the theater is a space-time experience that has nothing to do with television viewing devoid of bodies on stage and bodies in the stalls. We are beings made for closeness. Walter Benjamin in The work of art in the era of its technical reproducibility it tells us that if I move my legs to go and see a Rembrandt, I have a different experience from what I would do when I look at it at the computer, where I don’t see a Rembrandt, I see information. My Rembrandt experience is something that doesn’t need comment to be understood. Today we have the comment in the age of social reproducibility. And it’s really uninteresting. There is a lot of background noise. That blurs reality. We engulf ourselves in TV series to eliminate boredom, as if it were the most terrible thing. Digitization aims to eliminate the waste of time, a ridiculous idea. The duration of a show such as M., which lasts three hours, makes resistance. And it wins. We are willing to binge watch horrible series, watch them for three hours straight. But with M. we always had a full house. And we’ll take it back in the fall.
Tommaso Ragno in Fargo 4.
He’s mad at series, but part of his second life is digital.
Platforms have made things possible that were previously unthinkable. I have done Fargo which is the most beautiful series in the world, incredible writing, great actors, Ben Whishaw, Chris Rock… One episode cost 100 million dollars, but everyone was seen. And it is interesting that the international proposal came to me at this age, as a young man I might have wanted to play it there, America would have seduced me, but I had no problem coming and going. Because I know very well that I am a nobody who has built his path with a lot of effort, between ups and downs. Youth is the moment of sowing, it is not certain that we must follow the American myth of success by a specific date. There is also another way: I am an actor, I am not a phenomenon, the actor is someone who learns a trade and builds it with craftsmanship and, if he is lucky, with mastery. Part of my television journey has been linked to my body, to how it was, but I didn’t transform myself with the great De Niro-like metamorphosis. And I didn’t lose weight for a role, it was my need. Luckily I was like that when he arrived M.because it was a very demanding show.
At this stage, paternity also arrived.
Children can be had, becoming fathers is another thing. I don’t talk about this easily, as I always do with things that affect other people as well. The only thing I can say is that there is an impressive increase in life because the contact with children is the most authentic. They give you a lot, because they want to learn and can’t wait to give back. Fatherhood is not for everyone, not everyone must have children, but if it happens it is sublime and miserable at the same time, there is the highest and the lowest. Your heart is outside of you and it is a non-return, you can only continually feed and at the same time feel that you are at fault, because you will never know what the ultimate outcome of your action will be. The little Prince it says that you will always be responsible for what you have tamed and that you are responsible for your rose… I don’t think about children in terms of ownership, but cultivating is important. IS the time wasted on your rose that makes the rose special. Umberto Eco said that if he reads In search of lost time time will never be wasted. Those who do this work do not often see their children, having them requires them to choose things in another way. I had to re-understand why I was doing this job. I haven’t seen my son for months, because of the covid: he lives in Berlin he is Italian-German and he wants to live in Italy.
Tommaso Ragno in M Massimo Popolizio’s son of the century. photo © Masiar Pasquali
She too has lived in Berlin for years. When you leave the province to try your luck in less peaceful places, you usually have great ambitions. What made you cross the Po?
The imagination. The world into which I then entered triggered thoughts and I felt that this was the place that could have made me stay in balance. If I hadn’t done this job, maybe I would have ended up in the asylum. Today anyone can be an actor at an elementary level. Politicians do it at an elementary level every day, but if you invest in it, life is different.
No one in his family was part of it. How did they react in the end?
Intrigued. And happily surprised that I was able to make a living, that it wasn’t a hobby. Somewhere I still have a photocopy of the first check. I had exhibited it with pride.
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