A comment on Palazzo Di Giustizia
We find ourselves in a courthouse, two men are accused, one of robbing a petrol station, and the other one, the owner of the station, of shooting one of the two thieves. The latter accuse is discussed that day, both men have a face, a history and most important, a family. While the perpetrators in the court room are separated by bars and may only communicate by looks, their daughters, Luce and Domenica, get in direct contact in front of the room. Luce is very young, a child still, free and sassy and naïve and not quite able to understand the gravity of the situation. She cannot sit still, brings a sparrow with her, that keeps on escaping and has to be searched all over the courthouse, she plays in a puddle, collects glitter from the ground and brings a technician to share his food with her. And then there is the adolescent Domenica, who is trying to help her father and has a much better understanding of the situation, but still would love to be able to ignore the depth of it all. And those two characters are getting confronted with each other.
It is quite the interesting point of view from which to tell a story. Questions about the complexity of the humankind, justice and prejudices arise and even a discussion about whether a murder as an act of defence may be forgiven or not, could be sparked.
The actors are doing, regarding their age, a good job and I find the setting of the film really fascinating. Watching the characters while they are waiting is a cool way to get to know them, seeing how they are behaving, communicating and how they are dealing with the circumstances. Also their relationship and the way they are getting to know each other are quite an interesting. The only problem is that, in my opinion, the whole story is already told after very little time. How the relations are going to change becomes clear very quickly, the storyline and the characters are not complex enough to carry the story for 90 minutes, the plot of the movie doesn’t really develop, small events do occur, but nothing, that really helps guiding the film. The narrative style changes inconsistently, trying to tell the story from inside as well as outside the court room, the camera is distracted and a love interest, that doesn’t improve the story in any way, is introduced. I am quite sure, that the story could have been told entirely from outside the court room and that the two strong female characters would have been able to carry the story on their own.
So, all in all I think, that the idea itself is a very cool one and combined with the good acting, it could have had a lot of potential for strong dialogues and a proper controversy about the question: “Are we all equal before the law?”. But in the end the length and the content of the film do not coincide, too many topics are just lightly touched and the essential meaning of the movie is getting lost.
Origin of photo material: https://www.berlinale.de/de/programm/programm/detail.html?film_id=202002452&openedFromSearch=true#gallery_gallery-filmstills-1
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