MovieChat Forums > Io non ho paura (2004) Discussion > So am I supposed to identify with a bunc...

So am I supposed to identify with a bunch of kidnappers?


(spoilers, obviously)







I can't deny that this movie was gorgeous - the colors of the fields, the attention to the little animals that lived there, the beautiful sky. The kids were all pretty good actors (I read somewhere that most of them weren't professionals?) and spoke as I assume children would.

However, I was so consumed by hate for the parents & other adults that I found it distracting. I'm not the type that demands movie-makers change their message to please the audience, so I'm not exactly complaining about the plot. However, I had ZERO sympathy for the parents, for the mom crying about how her son should leave when he's older, for the father's grief when he accidentally shot his son (I felt bad for Michele, of course). I couldn't identify with them at all. How can you value the life of your own children, but be ready to kill someone else's child for (presumably) money? How can you just leave him in a hole? I don't really care how many "reservations" the kidnappers seemed to have, the bottom line is that they made a choice to execute that poor kid instead of leave him wandering around in a city or something.

Michele's reaction was odd too - he was 10 years old. Why was his first reaction not to tell anyone about the boy in the hole? I don't get it. If he was younger, I might understand. But 10 is old enough to know right from wrong and reality from fantasy. His complacence (until the end) was somewhat shocking to me as well.


They're coming to get you, Barbara!

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[deleted]

Okay .... I'm pretty sure the director wanted you to identify with someone, since he made a point of humanizing the adults during several scenes, as well as putting the film from the perspective of a small boy. But yeah. Thanks for the film lesson;) I was still disappointed.

They're coming to get you, Barbara!

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[deleted]

What are you on about?
Michele is the hero of the story, not the adults.

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[deleted]

Michele lives in a town where questions are not encouraged and the police are the regarded as the enemy. In Italy in the 1970s the police were corrupt, and the mafia and other criminal gangs were common. On top of that education was probably substandard in his little village. I felt sympathy for Michele, not really knowing who to trust, and it turns out he would have been foolish to trust his father, who was part of the kidnapping plot. The fact that so many of the men in the village are thugs in the gang really is exasperating to a viewer, but I think that's historically accurate. The movie is after all based on a true story of a kidnapping in the 1970s in southern Italy where much of a village was involved in the crime.

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thank you keirst...

helps me understand more of the background...of the story.

great movie...
and I loved the end when the 2 boys reach out to each other.


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