The innocence of a child can lay bare the compassionate side of religion that the adult world tends to complicate and turn into a site of conflicts. In Marco Bellocchio’s Italian film Rapito (Kidnapped), a young Jewish boy named Edgardo Mortara, says the prayer of Israel in a Catholic church, just as he regards the holy cross as a good luck charm and looks towards the statue of Christ for a sense of comfort and security. There are no divisions or distinctions between the two faiths in his mind, even as the film is about the two fighting to possess him and his soul.
Inspired by Daniele Scalise’s book Il cao Mortara, the film begins in the 1850s when Mortara, the sixth child of a Jewish family is abducted by the Papal States to get raised as a Catholic in Rome. All because he had been secretly baptized as a child, an act that can’t be annulled, and hence he is forbidden to be raised amid people of a different belief even if they are his own.
Bellocchio crafts a strong, sturdy, beautifully mounted, energetic, and engaging film though not quite the top of the heap in the official competition section of the Cannes Film Festival. Tension, drama, and emotions propel the narrative in equal measure. The film flows like a thriller that gradually mutates into an exploration of human predicaments and vicissitudes of life and the unspoken tragedies that they can engender. Bellocchio goes about telling the story in a straightforward, linear, and at times heavy-handed fashion, starting with the kidnapping itself. In the kidnapping sequence, we could vividly see the disbelief of the family, their sense of violation, and the heartbreak of the forcible separation from their child for no fault of their own.
There’s a lot at stake for the Church itself. Will it be seen in a bad light? Will the Saviour be perceived as a criminal? Will it be questioned for antisemitism? What of the authority of the Pope himself? And the media outcry?
But the most heart-tugging is the plight of the child himself as he becomes the arena of this theological tussle. To put up a brave front before his father and mother but not being able to cross over to where he truly belongs and go back to being with them. Enea Sala’s performance as the young Mortara is virtuoso beyond his age, especially in the scene where he meets the mother, can’t hold back his tears, and tells her that he still recites the Jewish prayer every night. With as clear a conscience, he goes about removing the iron spikes from the statue of Jesus, hoping to bring comfort to an alien figure that has been bringing him succor in turbulent times. There is no either-or in his heart and mind, it’s where the irreconcilables come together and co-exist in peace.
As the child stays caught in the crossfire of religion, Italy goes through a political transformation, with forces of democracy pitted against the papacy. A much-needed rift emerges between the Church and its power-hungry Pope as opposed to the state.
Slowly the film takes a different turn to become all about the power of persuasion. Mortara moves on from his past, growing up to renounce his family and embrace Christianity. The enormity of his loss hits home in the finale, worsened by the understanding that people could be voluntarily oblivious to the tragedies in their own lives. And that’s essentially the lesson to take back from the film. There can be no winners in the fights of faith and fanaticism.
Cinema Without Borders In this weekly column, the writer introduces you to powerful cinema from across the world
Film: Rapito (Kidnapped)
