Talking Shorts: The Words That Gaze Back At You by Igor Kaj (Kędzierski)

The text was created as part of the Talking Shorts workshops during Ale Kino! Pro at the 43rd Ale Kino! Festival.

Igor Kaj (Kędzierski) reviews „RANDAGHI”

It can hurt to put your hometown experience into words. Such unease grows when two Italians, the writer-director brothers Enrico and Emanuele Motti, decide to name the film with the word “stray” in their native language (“randagio”), but “needles” (“aghi”) somehow appear at the end of it. RANDAGHI is an animated short and one of the most evocative works of the “Burning Desires” programme at the 43rd Ale Kino! Festival in Poznań. If such a word had an established meaning, it would echo the state of being so lost in an unpleasant land, as if you’ve landed on a barbed wire. When the title appears over a dangerously spiky starry-sky, a couple of 2D punk bros are already aimless under them. They fill their mouths with grimaces and silence. Cigarettes and gasoline are their only source of protein. Just a few words are spoken. But most of them can be found on unexpected surfaces.

This fascinatingly depressing journey starts with a flashy trigger warning. Its sheer obtrusiveness feels like it warrants its own on-screen caution. You, the viewer, are being warned about witnessing intense feelings and potentially disturbing behavior – and that’s exactly the kind of emotional rush the characters chase. Their skin is sometimes translucent, revealing the rustling reeds in the background of the frame. Almost as if someone had used Paint and selected one of those brush options that doesn’t fully fill a page with just one stroke. Such bodies also let the uneasiness of crickets, whistling echoes, and air raid sirens traverse. Some of these obtrusive sounds appear only briefly, fleetingly, vanishing as soon as the shot ends. For in the characters’ world, in their post-apocalyptic countryside, there’s never a time to rest.

Names are easy to miss with the millisecond flash of redness through which they appear. Nico and Livio are so alike, they might as well be brothers, but the film shows what is perhaps the very first time they meet. What gives it away is that they don’t know their smoking habits yet, and in their hometown (Southern Italy, judging by the accent) nicotine is almost all there is. It’s especially evident through the cigarettes’ packaging with “Skills” crumpled all over. The one Livio got was kicking his way under the dilapidated tobacco sign and into the broken vending machine. Almost as if in this world smoking doesn’t “kill” but is a “skill” in itself. And it’s something you’re advised to exercise. Nico even gets a signed lighter from his new friend with an unfinished Italian imperative written on it. The first half of such a word (“appiccare”) prompts him to ignite something. Anything. A cigarette or a nearby garbage pile. It doesn’t matter. The letter “A” carved into an anarchy symbol on that lighter can inspire you to do whatever. However, when Livio eventually does set fire to something other than a cigarette, he leaves it fuming with the same color as the muzzle of a savage dog. And in RANDAGHI the blood on the animal’s fangs is thick, while the drained bones of its victim stick out shrilly beneath the black paws.

Hopelessness is permeable in the Motti brothers’ film world. If that wasn’t enough, Nico finds a TV on its last breath telling him he had already lost (“hai perso”). As well as an “Inferno” sign at a shack with starving dogs nearby. Those animals form a deadly, tattoo-marked tribe guarding the sacred tradition of the economic gap between the Italian countryside and the ever-growing North. And they will kill to keep it going that way. Hence, Nico and Livio’s lives are predestined to be aimless, regressive, and spent disjointly – especially when they eventually go their separate ways after one random skirmish. The only real shift the boys are able to experience is when their dialogue is altered while translated into English on screen. Some monotonous vowels are elongated when written down, and one irritated line is bizarrely paired with a smiley emoji. But there’s no reason to smile. The southern suburbs are always just a fleeting space caught between bad and worse; and never a bridge to any nearby metropolises. When in Naples, do as the Neapolitans do. And when in the suburbs, you’re free to do whatever. But don’t even try to achieve anything above your pre-assigned status. Or the crickets will hush. And only then will the dogs silently get you.

The Mottis’ gruesome injustice makes your mind wander outside the animated countryside. Perhaps towards the directors’ hometown, overgrown with narrow streets leading to nowhere. There, an in-your-face graffiti tells a handful of neighbors not to leave their car in front of it. But you rarely see anything written down in this place. That is why every instance of words being left alone in the landscape grabs your attention. You wouldn’t treat it as a request, but as a warning. It’s a message from an underprivileged townsman finding an enemy within his peers. Forgetting who the real villain is. There is no happy face spread across the billboard that tries to invite you for a quick social gathering at the food court. It’s the south of Italy. Naples is nearby. In the city one would probably see more well-known monuments and glass facades. Now, I am only stuck with harsh feelings written down as graffiti and glimpses of local forests through crumbling structures. I use Google Maps. This is the closest I can get to the suburban paths of Italy from the slippery roads of my big Polish hometown. This, or RANDAGHI. Let me choose the latter…