Transgression and Temporal Disorder in ‘Happy as Lazzaro’
For Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy as Lazzaro, all sense of time is illusory: established notions of linearity are scrapped, and along with it, the symptoms of the age — all its markers and signifiers. Nothing is ever truly anachronistic because, somewhere deep down in Happy as Lazzaro’s temporal wilderness, there is a reference point — yet the film gleefully breaks this illusion of temporal order. We may be forgiven at first for thinking we are about to watch a period piece — a Tree of Wooden Clogs-esque peasant drama or a resurrection of neorealism — as the tobacco sharecropper’s shabby pastoral architecture and folk traditions, sheltered off from global concerns, seem to suggest. This is gradually eroded as signs of modernity come slipping in — vehicles, electronic calculators, rumours of “the city”. Upon the arrival of Marchesa Alfonsina de Luna, and her bourgeois family that owns the property the sharecroppers work on (and through that owns them), the reference point becomes apparent to us — this is the 1980s. Right?
The fashion and technology that the family adorn themselves with certainly make it appear as such; emphasised by the contrast in technologies and luxuries — or lack thereof — between them and the sharecroppers. The stagnant alienation from the labour the Marchesa oversees is reminiscent of Lucrecia Martel’s pepper magnates in La Cienaga — sunhats and red-wine modern privilege contrasted against the humid green of Argentinian swampland, swapped here for an Italian Barbizon-school countryside of gleaners and serfdom. The Marquis Tancredi’s stylised bleach-blonde hair, poster-boy skinniness, colourful fashion sense, and headphones make him a signpost of 80s urban bourgeois culture — and by extension, contemporary nostalgia-tinged style (an “anachronism” only furthered by the fact that Tancredi is played by Luca Chikovani, an Italian popstar and YouTube personality). Compare this then to the film’s hero-of-sorts Lazzaro, depicted as a figure of peasant humility — faded white shirt, brown work-pants, shoes with soles bound with twine, and unkempt shaggy locks. Yet even with these emerging 80s gestures, the story is still centred around these Italian sharecroppers — a feudal hangover that is somehow alive and well, albeit tucked away, in the neoliberal age. Even their monikers — Marquis/Marchesa, and her nickname “The Queen of Cigarettes” — speak of feudalism and the capitalist world merging together. The film makes no effort to make these contrasts, visual jumps, and “anachronisms” any less jarring — when the sharecroppers are finally being escorted off the land, the sight of a helicopter and a coach become weirdly obtrusive. By this point, they’re about as foreign to us (in our assessment of the film’s technological historiography) as to the sharecroppers.
Happy as Lazzaro’s binaries are constantly pushing against one another in uneasy opposition. These conflicts are explored with more than purely temporal references— conflicts of nature and artifice play off each other too. Lazzaro, the near-unstoppable force of innocence that drives the narrative, finds comfort in the chaos of nature. The earth tones of his peasant rags blend him into the dry dirt and rock-faces of the Italian countryside. He has an almost religious connection with his environment — his wisdom for flora and fauna is wondrous, sometimes miraculous. The sore thumb of human encroachment is blistering, however. The mysterious red light that flashes across the forest horizon is no less mysterious once Lazzaro, years later, discovers what it actually is: a power station. In this moment, its true purpose is unimportant — we come across it with fresh pre-modern eyes, as a tubular tangle of steel and noise cutting through the pastoral calm. The presence of the helicopter is a thing of mythological confusion — the sharecroppers stare in bewilderment as this thing flies over Inviolita; we share somewhat in their confusion, as we are not immediately privy to what this flying creature is. It is this bewilderment which catches Lazzaro off-guard, causing him to tumble from the sheer cliff-face and into the valley below. In a sense, the “anachronism” begets a real anachronism — as the presence of this strange world knocks Lazzaro out of his old one and into the new. Still, within this “anachronism” lies yet another anachronism ready to spring forth, as the helicopter perspective shots of the rural Italian landscape are shot using drone photography, once again contrasting the presence of technology with that of nature. Technology, once disembodied from meaning, is not bound by time but is nonetheless acutely attached to the hierarchies of the moment. Things are no longer the tools they used to be, as they have become modes of expression for petty bourgeois entertainment. Things as simple as a cigarette holder are burdened by an elaborate amalgamation of mechanical contrivances — a music box and mantelpiece spectacle constructed with tragic kitsch and whimsy. Its original utility has been left behind — even as it falls into the hands of the now “free” sharecroppers, it becomes a tool for economic survival: its gaudiness makes it perfect for street-hustling on the streets of Italy’s urban middle-class. Creations are now devoid of their intentions, their meanings recycled and remixed to fit the circumstance.
While the universe maintains its own internal sense of power and hierarchy, in truth, the slippages of power and social dynamics at play are exposed as far less rigorous. The family has physically and intellectually disconnected the sharecroppers from the modern world — though they protest their plight, they still see themselves as bound within an unbeatable system. Their one transgression is Lazzaro, yet his transgression is not a straight-forward concept to realise. His innocence, ignorance, and extreme lack of narcissism makes him an object of constant exploitation, both by the Marquis family and the sharecroppers — in a sense, exploited by both the bourgeois and the proletariat. Though he exists at the bottom of the narrative’s internal hierarchy, as a consequence, he almost exists independent of it — almost as if his alienating levels of selflessness care little for notions of power. It is these qualities that keep him alive. Around this idea is where more of the film’s many binaries manifest themselves — that of fantasy versus reality; of agnosticism versus religiosity. The miracles and magic throughout are nameless enough in origin to suggest pure fantasy, yet miraculous and divine enough to evoke a Christian sentimentality. It is these flashes of spiritualism that undercut the harsh realism that is initially conjured up — the whistling wind summoned by the sharecroppers in unison, the swelling organ music which disembodies itself from its instrument and follows its listeners around, and the miracle of Lazzaro’s survival after falling from such a great height (Lazzaro? Lazarus?). “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” rings true here as if Lazzaro were the very embodiment of this — or rather, the power which seeks to make sure that this tenet does indeed ring true, even if his inheritance is one of modern urban drear. He is the one, with his humility and patience, that discovers the edible foliage surrounding the sharecropper’s new home: an abandoned silo by a railway track. The miracles and magic are celebrations of transgression — the beauty that is to be beheld in this world can barely be confined by the institutions which seek to restrict it. The majesty of divine music cannot be contained within the walls of a church; the city as the ultimate sign of man’s material domination of the natural world does little to stop its fruits appearing through the cracks and seeping through its fringes. All it takes is one mind — a walking miracle, exploited and abused by the people and the culture around him — to expose these structures for the superficialities that they truly are. It is revolutionary in its bucolic vision; impassioned in its struggle against an entanglement of historical oppression which seeks to keep the true magic in our world subdued.
