Sabina (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) is the living proof that one can’t peacefully live with a “beast in the heart”, albeit a latent one, one buried under years of oblivion; the beasts in the heart must be dug out, faced, accepted and 'digested’, otherwise one can never get rid of nightmares, be oneself, or hug one’s own children, …
La Bestia nel Cuore [Translator’s Note: The beast in the heart] conquered the Italian theatres in a particularly important moment for the Italian family and the role that it has always had… A revolutionary and changing time for the 'fundamental’ institution in Italian and human history. [The family is an] important, essential institution, nest of so many affections, loves, emotions, and feelings, and yet, perhaps too often, a grotesque theatre and chasm for little, silent and dramatic daily episodes, which, exactly because they happen within the family, by definition a positive and safe environment, remain for a long time hypocritically and intentionally hidden. Protected in the name of “we are a unity, we are a family, we must stick together and love each other”.
The strongest and heaviest threat that Comencini’s film launches sits precisely in this hypocrisy that allows and legitimates the defence of incestuous crimes, concealed behind a screen of innocent and formal normality. In the movie, it is not only the act of abuse towards small children that is horrifying, but also the dull and repetitive normality with which such an abuse is daily perpetrated by the father, passively observed by the mother and posed day after day, without any expression of rebellion, in the name of the 'family defence’. In front of the plea for help by the children, the mother justifies the father: “he is a good man, he is sick, he is spoilt, … we must love him, we are a family”.
It is almost incredible the radical change in personality and attitude which the father undergoes every night, compared to what he looks like and shows during the day: a faultless man, an authoritative and rigid teacher, a symbol of culture and knowledge, who at night is drawn, for years, towards the young son’s room, and, with a childish, faint, almost frightened voice, addresses him with the usual invitation: “Daniele, come”… Daniele, during his sister Sabina’s visit to New York at Christmas, will ask her, in distress: “But for what had he studied and learnt so many things, if then he had to hurt us so much?”
The film plays down the dramatic weight of the incest, mixing Sabina and Daniele’s torment with less important existential dramas: betrayals, infidelities, Sapphic loves, all masterfully interpreted by an exceptionally good cast, among which the fabulous acting of Stefania Rocca should be highlighted, who plays Emilia, best friend of, and in love with, Sabina, as well as completely blind. Certainly lesser familiar dramas, but nonetheless emblematic of the fall of an institution which for years has dominated [society] from behind a fort made of formality and normality, the classical family, ratified by marriage, which could protect itself from criticism and could often hide violence, abuses and mistreatments.
Comencini’s film acquires a particularly symbolic value in this period when our country [Italy] is facing the delicate issue of civil partnership contracts for those couples who live together and are 'like’ actual families but without the anointment of marriage… Is this just a coincidence? Perhaps, but it is worth wondering whether it is happening again that, behind a perfect, regular, and formal appearance, very serious dramas are concealed and kept buried, thanks again to an excessive focus on the exposure of weak and sacrilegious points in these new matches, which, although original and unconsecrated, are not necessarily any less sincere or slyer.
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