Black souls and a good film on the psychology of the ‘Ndrangheta , which focuses heavily on the comparison between the figures of three brothers. The plot follows a classic idea of ​​mafia cinema, namely that of the impossibility of getting out of a logic of suspicion, revenge and the struggle for control of the territory of origin as the foundation of power, and at the same time as a tragic limit.
The three brothers have different temperaments, yet all with a common root, as if they were the different faces of the same potential, genetically determined entity. I had also discussed a similar thing with regard to the characters of “The Godfather”, to which I refer the readers.
In this case, the real protagonist of the story is, of the three brothers, the most depressed, the eldest. He is a shepherd, his life is marked by predictable and reassuring rhythms, he took refuge on the top of a mountain, in the company only of his animals and the ruins of an abandoned mountain village.
A strategic refuge, which others consider vile, a renunciation of struggles and confrontation with the powerful of the “downstream” country. The pastor brother has slipped away as if to indicate that he will not bother, and therefore can be left alone. Reference of him is the statue of a saint, from whose stone he scrapes off a powder which he then drinks by mixing it with coffee, as if it were a bitter medicine to dilute passions.
But for the local boss the older brother, however depressed, he cannot be extraneous to his own blood, he cannot not know and not have a position on what other family members are doing, in the country and outside. Outside, the two brothers got rich from drug trafficking, one as a trafficker, the other as a launderer, but they do not give the part due to their fellow villagers. The blood does not stagnate, and from the mountain where Luciano tried to hide it, it flows back to the valley.
Thus begins an inevitable path, to which everyone adapts based on his or her temperament. The trafficker brother, hyperthymic, exuberant, braggart and optimistic about his ability to inspire fear, will seek alliances and expose himself without too much concern to the risk that the enemies have already guessed his moves. In reality, his temperament has already “betrayed” him: he did not want to pay the local boss bribe, because he considers himself free, independent, out of pride and bravado.
The other brother, the clean face of the family, does legal business but with laundered money, and has decided to stay out of at least the crudest and bloodiest part of his family history. Yet, when urged by the death of loved ones, he will prove to be the most determined, even more than his hyperthymic brother, in seeking revenge. The mood of the cyclothymic, when teased, produces more extreme, impulsive and unexpected results. The hyperthymic person, always in high spirits, is therefore also less variable, and more optimistic.
Just like snakes that camouflage themselves well, he does not react in a disordered way to danger, he has no urgency and vehemence, and so he risks underestimating the enemy, overestimating himself. The cyclothymic is like the coral snake.
Aware that its fragile part “can be seen”, like the red color of the coral snake that cannot be camouflaged, when it is discovered it starts a violent and immediate attack, which it experiences as the only way to fight.
The cyclothymic is weaker but more “poisonous” when it gets angry. In this spiral the braggart brother will die first, in an ambush that he did not expect, despite the fact that he had already declared war. The cyclothymic brother will awaken from the bourgeois torpor that had masked his nature, and will organize his forces to respond. When the young son gets involved, the brother shepherd decides to close the affair, and he closes it as a dysthymic but first as a bipolar.
By not declaring wars with too optimistic grandiosity; not with the hatred of the cyclothymic who is inflamed with revenge; but with an implosive force that sees the annihilation of the family as the only solution, to close a circle of blood and pain.
He takes the gun and fires on the remaining brother, so that his sins are paid for with the same blood. The themes are all depressive: guilt, ruin, death. The destructive force and bipolarism, which finds a great way in any case: in a hyperthymic version, with the gambling war of the younger brother; with the vengeance of the intermediate brother; with the purifying implosion of the elder brother.
Black souls, because they share the “fury”, the mania, which crosses all three characters, producing its various faces: euphoric, furious, depressive.
The revealing scene of bipolarity hidden under the blanket of depression and that of the table in the mountains. The elder brother promises the other, to take him to his side, that when they win they will take other lands, so “half of the mountain will be ours”, and the other replies, with a mask of indifference “and that I should do it with goal mountain
“.
This answer is crucial, and ambiguous. It is both the response of a depressed person (which I do with having so much, that interests me …), and the response of a bipolar (half mountain and like nothing,
It is therefore a middle ground between running away from war and dreaming of an impossible victory. The goal of the world, which pushes the hyperthymic person to challenge fate (to then move towards the whole mountain), for the dysthymic (bipolar) is a useless goal (because in the end the whole mountain does not exist, and then a refuge is better Invisible).
