Venice Film Festival: Netflix’s ‘The Hand of God’ Review

The national cinema of Italy, perhaps more than most countries, lives in the shadow of one director: Federico Fellini. The man tipped as his likeliest successor, Paolo Sorrentino, has also been one of his most careful emulators. But in his latest work, The Hand of God, Sorrentino stops solely looking up at his cinematic idol and starts looking inward to his own experiences and perspectives. The result is his most moving and monumental work to date – not to mention his most accessible to those without a scholarly knowledge of Italian cinema.

The Hand of God, a reference to the fantastic football stylings of Diego Maradona, is Sorrentino’s auto-fictional tale shining a powerfully personal lens on his formative years. The film resembles the coming-of-age genre given the emotional milestones it marks in the life of adolescent protagonist Fabietto Schisa (Filippo Scotti) – known as Fabié, affectionately. He suffers profound grief and loss. He experiences the thralls of lust and the vagaries of sexuality. He cheers passionately for football (soccer, to American viewers) and grows a budding interest in the cinematic arts. He develops his sense of artistic integrity and vision, the one that ultimately leaps from the character in front of the camera to the director behind it.

But, more than anything, he observes – a marked change of pace for the traditionally declarative Sorrentino. In the usual journey of a maturing protagonist, the world around them tends to only matter insofar as it impacts that character. In The Hand of God, Sorrentino centers these forces in his storytelling. The eclectic assortment of friends and family in Fabietto’s Neapolitan environs is what made him who he is, which is reason enough for them to matter. Yet there’s reflective wisdom at work with Sorrentino’s recounting, an understanding that their eccentricities and profundities are worth sharing with the world regardless of their connection to his own maturation.

Fabié is thus an intriguing outlier among teenage protagonists gaining their sense of self on screen. Rather than focus on the process of socialization, Sorrentino trains his eye primarily on those doing the socializing. Fabié functions largely as a passive figure, taking in the events and wild personalities for the audience. But Scotti’s open-hearted performance is anything but passive. And given the way that the very art of viewing is what makes Fabié equipped to make films later in life, his ability to gaze with purpose and presence is crucial to the success of The Hand of God. Scotti is not just a black hole absorbing the zaniness surrounding him; he’s processing and reflecting it back to the audience.

It’s noteworthy that in spite of Sorrentino casting a backward glance at his life, the film never feels soaked in cheap nostalgia. The Hand of God possesses the tenderness and warmth of a homespun yarn, rich with texture both physical and emotional. If there’s an element of the film that still maintains that Fellini feeling, it’s the affectionate but carnivalesque portrayal of Fabié’s family. The way Sorrentino shoots them in grotesque, angular close-ups can transform any relative into an instant caricature. Yet there’s a dignity in detail for even the most derided figure in the family, a plump and cantankerous matron, through something like a droll cutaway gag to a mound of mozzarella falling off her plate as she dozes off to sleep. He cares enough to notice these small, humanizing moments for people beyond just himself.

Sorrentino’s insistence on capturing the contours of everyone on-screen necessitates a different kind of storytelling in The Hand of God. The sprawling ensemble assembled requires a more episodic approach to relaying Fabié’s development rather than the more linear ascent. It’s not without some meandering moments along the way, but nothing feels self-indulgent. Sorrentino avoids the biggest pitfall of personal filmmaking: a cinematic “family album” with limited interest to outsiders, even if narrated by the most animated storyteller of the bunch.

If anything, the structure gives Sorrentino the opportunity to linger a bit more on mundane interactions and to suggest a vast reserve of emotion lurking just under the surface. This does not express itself in the moment because it would not do so for Fabié. It’s on Sorrentino to excavate it later and convey the potency of these experiences. With patience, he achieves that aim to honest and heartwarming effect. The Hand of God finesses an emotional sensitivity from the simple sensations of life without dipping into easy sentimentality.

Given the way that Sorrentino sets up Fabié’s – and, by extension, his own – entry into filmmaking, what is The Hand of God if not an arthouse origin story? But unlike the mainstream version of this tired convention, he’s not pandering to an in-group with a series of callbacks and Easter eggs meant to flatter the intelligence of those already in the know. What Sorrentino crafts is not a closed loop but an open door. This is an outstretched hand for all to commune with cinema through the vastness of life rather than the minutiae of artistic references. Grab it tightly.

The Hand of God had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. It will debut on Netflix on December 15, 2021.

Marshall Shaffer is a New York-based freelance film journalist. In addition to Decider, his work has also appeared on Slashfilm, Slant, Little White Lies and many other outlets. Some day soon, everyone will realize how right he is about Spring Breakers.

Watch The Hand of God on Netflix