Ghostly Articulations: Melancholy and Invention
in Nanni Moretti’s Palombella Rossa
Ghostly Articulations: Melancholy and Invention
in Nanni Moretti’s Palombella Rossa
Author(s): Horea PoenarSubject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Literary Texts, Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Political Theory, Film / Cinema / Cinematography
Published by: Universitatea Babeş-Bolyai, Facultatea de Teatru si Televiziune
Keywords: melancholy; commons; figure; Idea; communism;
Summary/Abstract: In 1989, Nanni Moretti’s movie Palombella Rossa is not just another comedy dealing with the key aspect of the times: the end of the Communist regimes. Especially in the context already prepared for the triumphant announcement of post-history and post-ideology, his movie is a profound meditation on what happens to the key communist ideas of equality, solidarity and justice. In our reading of the movie, Moretti reveals the melancholic mechanism of Communist identity and this is done through cinematic means that can still link comic elements to the emergence of short but intense moments of sublime. Our paper rereads Palombella Rossa retroactively as one of the few authentic moments of political thinking of the times (along with Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx, for example) buried quickly under the new ideology of anticommunism.
Journal: Ekphrasis. Images, Cinema, Theory, Media
- Issue Year: 21/2019
- Issue No: 1
- Page Range: 237-247
- Page Count: 10
- Language: English