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Category: Movies
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Title: Quiet Chaos  | views:57 |  Review by John L Ng March 10
While browsing my local library for a DVD to spend a quiet evening, I came across a little Italian film by Antonello Grimaldi. Its oxymoronic title, Quiet Chaos, caught my attention. It is a quiet study of how a man grieves. Two closely knit brothers, Pietro (Nanni Moretti) and Carlo are nurturing their relationship on the beach when two drowning women yell for help. The brothers in synchronized courage brave the ocean to save them. When they return to Pietro’s villa, they discover that Pietro’s wife has suddenly fallen and died in their absence. His distraught ten year old daughter Claudia (BluYoshimi) laments why her father was not there to save her mother. Such is the brutal irony of being human – Pietro saves a stranger on the beach but is not able to save someone close at home.
After the funeral, Pietro re-enters his quiet world to grieve. As summer turns to autumn, he re-dedicates his care of Claudia. Pietro takes a leave from work to take her to school every day and to stay at a park across the street to be close to her. He spends his days sitting on a bench waiting for her. Death is a rude reminder that when something we treasure is lost, we instinctively hold more closely what remains. Away from his high executive office and in the midst of many distractions from pedestrians, family and colleagues, Pietro grieves in quiet chaos, waving to Claudia when she looks out the school window.
These daily distractions, humorous and serious, form a kind of chaotic environment as he copes with grief. He coordinates his car beep to catch the hand of a spirited Down’s syndrome boy walking with his mother. He long glances at an attractive woman walking her dog. Bickering colleagues take turns coming by to seek his counsel regarding their company’s merger. A neurotic and insensitive sister-in-law invades his quiet space with disconcerting quips. He engages in soul searching conversations with his brother. In moments of quietness, he silently makes mental lists – of airlines he has flown, of houses he has lived in – to give himself a sense of order.
When grieving, we all want to be alone but we also want the world to stand still and wait for us. But the world won’t stand still and it certainly is not very quiet. The people in Pietro’s life go about their chores. Outwardly some are sympathetic, some show their hospitality and some know. There is no ideal place to grieve. In each passing day Pietro has to steal a few fleeting moments to deal with what he has lost.
That quiet chaos can also describe Pietro’s grief itself. He is apparently mourning. But we are not so sure. There are no overt signs of the five classic stages of coping with death – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. There is no rancorous weeping or self loathing. If there are clashes of emotions, they are safely confined inside. Even when he is conflicted with those whose distractions irk him, he shows tolerance and restrain. You may suspect that Pietro’s grief is repressed. I think not. It is submerged in quiet chaos but not repressed.
As autumn becomes winter, can spring be too far behind Claudia, who seems unperturbed by it all (can a ten year old feel death her father feels), at last releases her father to move on in life with others and with her. Quiet Chaos impassively shows us how a man grieves, or perhaps how a man ought to grieve.
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| Review submitted: 2010/4/7
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