Comedy Review

I think it would have been easy to watch this movie, laugh at the jokes and the crazy situations that the characters got themselves into, and then move along with my day. However, I think that there were quite a few serious underlying messages that the directors of this movie set out to deliver. Yes, the drug-making situation is funny, and the characters' personalities exaggerate the conflict. Still, the driving force of the drug business has a certain reality to it that I think is interesting to discuss. At the root of the problem, this movie places a huge emphasis on the biased and politicized education system in Italy. Pietro is unable to fund his research to keep his job because he made an "incorrect political statement," and this was only the first instance of an intelligent and capable professor not being able to keep a job. When he begins collecting other ex-professor friends for his project, although it may be an exaggeration of how common this problem is, it sends the message that it is really difficult to hold onto a job as a professor in Italy. 

Along with the struggle to hold a university job came the desperation that this caused, specifically in terms of money. Pietro and Giulia are constantly shown discussing money, their lack of it, etc. Pietro has to tutor students to try to scrounge up some cash, and he even ends up in a nightclub because he chased down a student for payment. This nightclub scene specifically was one of the most intense examples of desperation in this movie. However, you have to really focus on analyzing the themes of the movie to notice this, because the directors masked the seriousness of the situation with comedy. Pietro wakes up on the floor of a bathroom with a funny drawing on his face, clearly directed to make the audience laugh. This is just one of many examples throughout this movie of comedy lightening and almost masking extremely serious situations.  

I think that using comedy to present these problems within Italian society is a clever way to bring attention to them. People are more likely to watch a movie that is going to make them laugh than a monotone and depressing documentary about Italy's education system. Comedy in general allows us to lighten up situations so that they're easier to talk about, and I think that's one of the reasons that the directors of this film executed this the way that they did. Another reason that I think they used comedy might be to bring the education problems and all of the impacts that it has on peoples' lives to light without getting too serious and offending anyone who is part of the corrupted system.