Gomorrah

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TMDaines
Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2009 1:01 pm
Location: Stretford, Manchester

Gomorrah

#1 Post by TMDaines » Thu Mar 22, 2018 6:28 pm

Pretty unusual for us to breeze through whole seasons of a show in a week or so, but after really enjoying the first two series in late 2017, we were waiting for the third to come out and it was superb again.

I’m struggling to think of a crime show from the perspective of the criminals that is willing to be as dark as this one and not provide us with any real anti-heroes. There’s no glamour to this world of drugs and violence. Money exists as nothing more than a measure of current volatile power. No one ever gets to enjoy their spoils outside of the most gaudy interior design possible. No one can accept their current lot in life. Every time you find yourself sympathising and rooting for someone, they too will be corrupted by power or allow their paranoia to betray them.

There’s an incredible attention to detail to the show’s living, breathing milieu, that features brilliant use of varieties of the spoken form from anywhere between Italian and Neapolitan on the dialect continuum. The location scouts do a fantastic job of bringing out the best of Naples’ varied rugged and brutal architecture, which provides a series of great backdrops for the fate of the characters to play out in front of. The writing is generally very sharp, both in terms of dialogue and the plot, which is always engaging, often thrilling and terrifying, but somehow remains always understandable. Great endeavour is taken to always depict the motivations of all involved without a heavy reliance on too much exposition.

The Arrow Blu-rays aren’t the greatest sadly. There’s a lot of dark scenes ruined by macro blocking in the third series discs and bitrate shouldn’t have been a problem given the video content per disc.

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TMDaines
Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2009 1:01 pm
Location: Stretford, Manchester

Re: Gomorrah

#2 Post by TMDaines » Fri Nov 29, 2019 7:15 am

Still no interest in the show here? Real shame, as I think a lot of people would find a lot to admire in it.

We whizzed through the fourth season over the last couple of weeks. The pacing felt slower early on, but there were a lot of strong episodes that had a character focus. Gennaro and Patrizia are two characters who have been expertly written and have gone on a fantastic arc by this point. The episodes dealing with their insecurities and desires to either better or secure their future felt true. It all set up to a rather inevitable conclusion where the temporary peace would be broken and a new war would begin.

The show's biggest strength is still its ability to deliver incredibly bleak, dark moments. All the protagonists in Gomorra are terrible people; they are rotten to the core and only motivated by self interest. Every time you find yourself invested in someone and willing them to succeed, you'll be given a swift reminder about who exactly you are supporting and the callous and brutally cruel acts that they are capable of. The first two Godfather films are two of my all-time top ten, I loved The Sopranos, and admire many of Scorsese's film, but all of those works had anti-heroes you were somewhat comfortable with having emotionally invested in, they were considered cool, despite the terrible things they did. I don't think any of these works ever really attempted to make you complicit and guilty in having supported them. There is an almost Haneke-like vibe to some of the killings in Gomorrah where after episodes of build for them to avoid the police or deliver their own form of justice, the veil of the character slips and you, the viewer, are completely exposed to what you are watching. There's little gore or pornographic violence, it's far more banal and transactional than that, and far more challenging in the name of entertainment.

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Caligula
Carthago delenda est
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 2:32 am
Location: George, South Africa

Re: Gomorrah

#3 Post by Caligula » Tue Dec 03, 2019 4:04 am

Great write-up(s), TMDaines. Not much I can add to that, except that my family's been enjoying the show a lot (we've now started with Season 4), it actually became just better as it progressed. The production values are excellent. The writing, the sets, the locations are fabulous, lots of effort went into the hairstyling, and a obvious care and effort went into the wardrobes. You really get the idea that every character was throroughly mapped, planned, fleshed out and linked to a style of dress, that just feels right for the character.

Highly recommended

M Sanderson
Joined: Sat Oct 22, 2016 3:43 am

Re: Gomorrah

#4 Post by M Sanderson » Thu Feb 27, 2020 7:58 am

It really is compelling. Marco d’amore’s cunning and manipulating killer/negotiator must be one of the great continental noir antiheroes since Alain Delon in the thrillers by Melville.

I’m disappointed that Arrow have no plans to release the Ciro Movie L’Immortale, which is supposed to connect together seasons 4 and the upcoming season 5 of the show. Arrow TV obviously brought the series to Blu-ray and DVD, in the U.K.

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