436 - Flight of the Innocent, Italy/France, 1992. Dir. Carlo Carlei.

Monday, March 12, 2018

436 - Flight of the Innocent, Italy/France, 1992.  Dir. Carlo Carlei.

"Since 1966, due to the depressed economy in the South of Italy, kidnapping has become almost an alternative industry.  Men, women, and children, usually from the wealthy north, were kidnapped and transported south where they were often held in horribly inhumane conditions.  Used as bartering chips by their merciless kidnappers, some hostages found themselves caught in the midst of feuds between rival gangs.  Many survived--others were not so fortunate.

Although the following is a work of fiction, similar events continue to occur to this very day."


Vito is ten years old.  He lives with his extended family in the Italian countryside.  He has memories of the three generations sitting together outdoors at the long table, sharing a meal.

Vito sits in the crotch of a tree, about ten feet above the ground.  Drawing.  He uses a BiC Cristal ballpoint stick pen.  1.0 mm medium brass point, tungsten carbide ball.  With non-roll hexagonal clear barrel.  Blue ink.  "Xtra Smooth."  In other words, the classic stick pen.  The kind you grew up with.  The kind you can still buy for $3.60 a dozen.  Or less.

He wears a light-olive shirt with the picture of an elephant on it, and the words "Safari Travel.  Elephant.  Wild Lands."  An image of boyhood dreaming.  Excursions.  Another continent.  Wild animals.  Adventure.

He has just dawn a black hawk.  He now draws a cloud near it.  He hears the bird.  He looks up and sees the bird.  He smiles.

Vito is innocent.  He dreams of flight.  He dreams of the flight of the innocent.  The hawk soars above the ground.  Vito, in his daydream, soars above the ground.

His mother brings him down to earth.

She is sopping the pigs.  She instructs him to go get the wine.

Vito goes into the large storage room.  The wine is kept in wooden barrels lying on their sides.  With spigots and hoses.  Vito places the end of a flask hose into an empty wine bottle.  He turns the spigot.

His father enters the room.  His father neither sees nor hears him.  Vito hides behind the wine barrels watching his father.

His father stands in his shirt sleeves.  Carrying his double-barreled shotgun.  We recognize it.  We recognize him.  We saw them in the scene before.  Vito did not see it.  Vito was innocently sitting in the tree.  Drawing.  What his father was doing was not innocent.

His father sets down the shotgun.  He runs his fingers through his hair.  What he has just done was not easy.  His is tired.  He exits the room.  Vito stares at the shotgun resting against the wooden pallet.  Vito forgets about the wine.  The wine overflows the wine bottle.  Pours onto the floor.

The sun begins to set behind the mountains.

At table his grandfather cuts the meat.  His grandmother sews.  His mother cooks.  His brother walks by and socks him in the back of the head.  He winces.  And lunges.  His grandfather grunts.  Stares at them.  Stops them.  His brother goes and takes his seat.  His sister already sits quietly at the table.

Vito's father enters the dining room.  He has removed his shirt.  He stands in his wife-beater undershirt and with a towel draped over his shoulder.  He wipes his face with the towel.

The father looks at the grandfather.  They make eye contact.  Vito watches.  The grandfather nods as if asking a question.  The father nods as if answering, Yes.  The grandfather nods as if saying, Good.

The father walks over to the sister.  Pats her on the head.  Asks if her fever is gone.  Leans over and kisses her.  Tells her she is pretty.  Tells her she can go back to school.  A loving moment.

Vito sees beneath the table.  The blood, still wet, runs down the toe of his fathers shoe.  Vito knows.

Vito's father sees that Vito sees something.  He tells him to come and eat.  Vito leaves the short wooden rocking chair and takes his seat at the table.  The grandmother leaves her sewing and joins them.  The mother enters the room and serves the food.  Steaming.

Their last meal.

Vito lies in bed at night.  The rain patters on his window panes.  He dreams of the gun.  The thunder awakens him.  The thunder sounds like gunfire.

The lightning lights the room.  He looks over and sees a family picture.  The happy family.  The grandparents.  The parents.  The three children.  And another man.  Tall.  Perhaps an uncle.

The sun rises over the mountain.  The rolling hillsides.  The vineyards.  The green garden surrounded by golden fields in the amber light of daybreak.

An idyllic morning.  A postcard life.

Today is the end of Vito's happy home.

The safari is fun for the tourists but not for the elephant.  Today's safaris exist to observe.  But the original safari was an expedition to hunt wild animals in their natural habitat.

The hawk takes flight, but the hawk is not innocent.  The hawk is a bird of prey.

The mother hangs white sheets on lines to dry.

A man emerges from behind the mud mound.  In a black wife-beater t-shirt.  A second man in a gray t-shirt runs out from behind him.

The first man takes aim.  Fires. 

The crimson blood spreads across the white sheet.  The second man.  A second shot.  The mother falls upon her back upon the ground.  Rolls in the sullied sheets.  As if mummifying herself.  As if preparing herself for burial.

Vito awakens to the gunshots.  This is not thunder.

He crawls under the bed.

His father emerges from the storage barn with his double-barreled shotgun.

The third man, a man in the white t-shirt has a fully automatic.

Two more men come.  A long-sleeved black shirt, carrying a sawed-off shotgun.  A short-sleeved shirt with a wild pattern, carrying a pistol.

The man in the black shirt finishes off Vito's father, with the sawed-off shotgun.  In the barn.  In the grain.

The grandfather emerges from his bedroom on the balcony with his own shotgun.  A sitting duck.  He shoots.  Four men return fire.

The man with the fully automatic gets the grandmother.  The man with the pistol gets the siblings.  Thankfully, these are all off-screen.

Vito hides under the bed.  The men look under the bed.  They do not find him.  He hangs above the floor, wedged between the mattress and the crossbars.

The men leave.

Vito tours the house.  He sees everything.  Every family member.  Forever gone.

He is alone in the world.

The day after he was happily--innocently--sitting in the tree, drawing the hawk, drawing the cloud, watching the hawk, watching the clouds, dreaming of flying.

Vito's life is changed forever.

These opening scenes of this film are difficult to watch.

Director Carlo Carlei wants people to know, to see, that these things really happen.  To real people.  To innocent people.

Vito's father and grandfather were not innocent.  They belonged to a gang.  And they were massacred by a rival gang.

We saw what Vito's father did in the beginning of the movie.

Two shepherds sit on the hillside watching their sheep.  They lean against large boulders.  They listen to music from their boom box.  Their sheepdog stands faithfully beside them.

Three men ambush them.  Shoot them in cold blood.  One of the three men, the leader, is Vito's father.  They get the first shepherd by surprise.  They chase the second shepherd through the sheep herd and get him just a few hundred feet away.

With the double-barreled shotgun.


The BiC pen clear barrel.  The side-lying wine barrels.  The shotgun double barrels.

A cylindrical container.  Containing ink.  Containing wine.  Containing gunshot.

The creative.  The celebratory.  The deadly.

The innocent.  The guilty.


Why should a ten-year old boy see these things?

He sees his sister.  His brother.  His grandfather.  His grandmother.  All in the house.  Lying in pools of blood.

He steps outside and cries out to the countryside.

He sits outside loving his mother.  Talking to her.  Her wedding band covered in blood on a broken finger.  He strokes her hair.

He finds his father in the barn.  Somehow still alive.  His own wedding band covered in his own blood.  His hand sticking up.  His fingers pointing to the air.  He speaks to his son.

"Vito.  Go find your brother.  Quickly.  Hurry."

There is another brother.  An older one.  Who lives elsewhere.

He expires.

Vito runs.  Runs through the fields.  Runs through the tall grass.  The fodder.  Runs through the countryside.  Through the woods.  The footbridge.  The trails.  To the cave.

He finds a backpack in the cave.  He picks up the backpack and puts it on.  He finds the owner of the backpack.  A boy.  Dead.  He sees the man with the long-sleeved black shirt.  With the sawed-off shotgun.  With a scar on his face.  Scarface.  Called that in the movie.  The man holds a knife to another boy's throat.  Vito cannot help it.  He calls out.

"Santo!"

Scarface hears him.  Sees him.  Chases him.  Trips over the dead boy and falls.  As if the boys conspire together against him.  To protect each other.

Vito makes it to the village.  No one will help him.  They shut their doors against him.  He pounds on the doors.  They do not open.  They are afraid.  Scarface catches up to him.  Vito hops a train.  The train starts moving.  Scarface misses it.  Vito is safe.

For now.

He studies the backpack.  Finds the name and address of the boy who owned it.  Simone.  He will go to that address.

He finds inside the backpack a book about the moon.  With a map.  And on that map is the Mare Tranquilitatis.

The Sea of Tranquility.

He sees it as a place for which to long.  A place of peace.  A place of safety.

This phrase means something to us as well.  I grew up in the city containing the world headquarters for space travel.  Huntsville, Alabama.  The place that put man on the moon.  We have our own lunar surface.  With our own sea of tranquility.  And our most famous address.  1 Tranquility Base.

Tranquility.  Peace.  Calm.  Serenity.  Repose.

He dreams that Simone appeals to him.  Asks him to help him.

For the rest of the film Vito flees for his life.  The flight of the innocent.

He has moments of safety.  He makes friends.  But Scarface is unrelenting.  And it all happens again.

And again.

And again.

Where can this little boy?

How can he ever be safe?

Whom can he trust?

When the people who take him in get killed themselves.

Or believe a lie and make foolish decisions.

Or are working surreptitiously for Scarface.

Or for their own purposes.

Throughout his ordeal, Vito is thoughtful and loving and brave.

He saves a least one life.  And helps to get the bad guys captured.

As he lies on his back in a pool of blood, listening to the gunfight overhead, he dreams of another life, another day.  Of three generations sitting together outdoors at the long table, sharing a meal.

His grandparents.  His parents.  His young siblings.  His adult brother and wife.  Simone and his parents.  Smiling.  Happy.  Tranquil.  Calm.  He looks under the table and his father's boot is free of blood.  He looks up.  His father smiles at him.  He smiles back.  Simone mouths the words to him.

The Sea of Tranquility.

We tilt up over the open sea.

He is taken by the ambulance, and he dreams again.  Of his room.  And his toys.  And place of peace.  A place of joy.

He smiles.


"I want to save you from the havoc that steals you and take you back to sleep in your tiny bed. - Elsa Morante, The World Saved by Little Children).