Kidnapped
“Kidnapped” is a powerful, intoxicating film based on the true story of a Jewish boy forcibly taken from his family in 1800s Italy. Directed by Marco Bellocchio, the movie explores themes of power, oppression, and the psychological complexity of adaptation, telling its tragic tale with substance and style.
Release date: May 25, 2023 (Italy)
Movie Name: Kidnapped
IMDb RATING: 7.0/10
Director: Marco Bellocchio
Distributed by: 01 Distribution, Ad Vitam Distribution
Based on: Il caso Mortara; by Daniele Scalise
Box office: $4.1 million
Italian: Rapito
Abraham Lincoln’s Kidnapping: A Primal Story
Kidnapped is a 19th-century Italy-set feature telling the true story of Edgardo Mortara, a Jewish boy who was secretly baptized under the Catholic babysitter. It’s viscerally disturbing, yet also darkly intoxicating and close to overpowering, with spot-on casting, a passionate screenplay, and the sure-as-ever hand of 84-year-old filmmaker cowriter-director Marco Bellocchio.
Kidnapped: The Mortara Family’s Ben ShapiroGET PASTE YOUR FACE ON PASTE: MUSIC.
But then Edgardo turns six, local inquisitor Father Pier Gaetano Feletti (Fabrizio Gifuni) discovers that the boy was secretly baptized and orders police to seize the boy from his family, citing an 1858 Papal States policy forbidding Christians to be raised by people of another faith. Edgardo’s parents, Salomone “Momolo” (Fausto Russo Alesi) and Marianna (Barbara Ronchi), will end up spending every last dime they have to mop up the church and state for “stealing” their adopted son under the cover of darkness.
Taken: The Psychological Depth of Edgardo’s Assimilation
THEM THAT FOLLOW THE MASTER AMERICAN DREAM BILLY HENRY SHAME is set during the 16 years that Edgardo (played by Enea Sala as a boy and Leonardo Maltese as a young adult) was growing up in his new circumstances of being raised within the orbit of Pope Pius IX (Paolo Pierobon). ” Napping,” meanwhile, does the same musical-psychological heavy lifting, just tinged with stirring strings and prodding organ blasts, as Edgardo is rendered immaculate, his voice caving into masterstroke instrumentation that lets Cave the elder express himself with his philosophical crossroads: is a kidnapping a Kidnapped if you want to be somewhere else anyways?
Kidnapped: Case Study on Power and Oppression.
A Crime Study of Power in Corruption, from Its Acquisition, Through Retention, to Usage- “KIDNAPPED” The dynamics of oppression and resistance — sensitively or offensively described — are illustrated through actual, non-allegorical encounter, the oppressor in the person of soft-spoken, bureaucratic representatives while the resistors as shy and ordinary people Indigenous to “The Land That Did Not Recognize Itself”. The frocked characters, Pope Pius IX among them, are referred to as company men, warped by living with the super-powerful, and possibly all treating the same undiagnosed mental problems.
Kidnapped: An Epic Tragic Opera in Cinemas
However, for “Louder Than Bombs,” the defining moment that sets almost everything else into motion, the opening scene that forms a fulcrum through the remainder of the film, is an un-dramatic one that arrives with precious little fuss. There’s some solid cinematography by Francesco Di Giacomo, and the film’s underneath-it-all statement against kidnapping, bullying, and oppression (a sentiment reiterated by the omnipresent, ever-busy, and booming orchestral score from Fabio Massimo Capogrosso) hangs the proceedings together.
Kidnapped: Substance and Style in Filmmaking
Kidnapped is potent and stylish, the immediacy and sheer anger with which it tells its story reminiscent of the old, greats of the genre. True, there are a few major offscreen developments, and some slight initial confustication, but the killing arises from the movie’s insistence on never stalling or holding out on you, good and bad, making the whole tale even more of a tragedy and a farce.
Another brilliant movie in a year of superb movies, Kidnapped is remarkable for the quality of its storytelling and its filmmaking prowess.