Marco Bellochio's Good Morning, Night is the story of four Red Brigadiers who kidnap and murder Aldo Moro, Italian Prime Minister and a leader in the Christian Democratic Party. Bellochio's main focus in the movie is the portrayal of lack of reality displayed by the Red Brigade members. This disillusionment is drawn out through the character Chiara, comparisons between the old and new, and the interviews with Aldo Moro while in captivity. The character, Chiara, is a most interesting one. She seems to be the only one of the Brigadiers who has any sense of reality or common sense. A librarian by trade and familial at home, Chiara is constantly confused towards the times and her involvement with the Red Brigade. This confusion is clearly depicted in her conversation with Enzo in the library as he correctly describes her in his screenplay. During this conversation, Enzo tells her that murder scares him yet if murder did not happen, the kidnapping would be meaningless but Chiara's seems to not comprehend this right away. They also engage in talk about reality vs imagination. She claims that imagination (concerning the screenplay) does nothing but the reality is that the screenplay is the truth. Confusion further sets in her mind. She even questions the murder with her comrades. Although she never changes in the movie, Bellochio uses Chiara to depict the confusion between reality and fantasy possessed by most Red Brigade members. Bellochio also uses comparison between the old and new to depict the lack of reality of the Brigadiers. The lunch and song scene with Chiara's family and the conversation amongst the youth is the ultimate exploration of this topic. Fischia il Vento, the song sung by the older family members is an adaptation of a Russian WWII folk song called Katyusha. The song was sung by many partisan groups in the Italian resistance movement who fought during WWII against the fascist governments in Italy and Germany who committed atrocious war crimes. Many of the older people sitting around the table were members of the WWII movement. Bellochio contrasts this older resistance, with moral and sensible goals, with the Brigadiers goals. From the conversation just before the song and during the whole movie, Bellochio implies that the Brigadiers just did not use their complete potential towards a moral cause. Finally, conversations between Aldo Moro and the Brigadiers are great executions of the theme, reality vs fantasy. Moro is the level headed mediator who is more in touch with reality than just about every character in the story. And his detainees are completely in touch with fictitious notions. In Moro's final pleas, he tells the Brigadiers that he will only become a martyr and that his death will not be beneficial to their cause. Moro even tries to explain to them that they both are working towards the same goals: peace and better lifestyle for the working class. The Red Brigadiers disillusionment is further amplified as the trial is claimed to be between the Christian Democratic Party and the Proletariats, whom the Brigadiers claim to represent. None of Moro's reasonable arguments work with the Brigadiers as he is tried and executed. Concluding, disillusionment is Bellochio's greatest implication towards this vicious act of brutality. He concerns himself with showing the viewers through Chiara, an older sense of morality and conversations, that the Red Brigade were just youth who did not understand that they live in such a strange world of hypocrisy.

This film is not so much about Caso Moro (also taken into consideration this his actual kidnapping and death are not shown), as it is about the psychology of the film's main character, Chiara, and that of the Red Brigades. I would characterize the film as fragmented; pieces of reality of the kidnapping of Aldo Moro are alternated with fragments of Chiara's fantasies and ideas (often accompanied by intense music), and historical footage. The end of the film comes unexpected and clarifies that the viewer of this film who felt that was missing a real plot was not making a mistake.In fact, a real plot, for me, didn't seem to exist and the fragments in the film are never really elaborated on or connected with one another. I agree fully with one of the commentators before me that for example a display of a relationship between Moro and the kidnappers was never really carried out in the film, nor was Chiara's young co-worker's obvious crush over her really brought to a definite end. Many other possible developments were also left untouched. Combined with Chiara's dreams of another reality, the film at times seems a bit surrealistic.Although the characters are never really developed in the course of the film, the Red Brigades are being shown as humane and less aggressive or hateful than they must have been in reality. The director seems to pass on the blame of the eventual death of Moro to two parties; his political "friends" and the Pope. His friends decide to not make an effort to free him and choose to ignore the Red Brigades and not meet their demands. The Pope, influenced by the politic point of view, also states that Moro must be released unconditionally. To the Red Brigades, of course, is left no other option than to kill the leader of the Christian democrats.If you're interested in Italian history, this would certainly be an interesting film to watch, because with the use of details and historical footage the director has been able to subtly pass his statements on the viewer and show us an image of this historical event that is very original, even if it is carried out in a manner all different than bold. The acting is above average, with the excellent Lo Cascio (La Meglio Gioventù), and Sansa (same reference). Roberto Herlitzka plays the role of Moro far from badly.But don't expect a large plot that will blow you away at the end of the film. As said, this film is subtle, and for me it took a while for the message to sink in.Jonathan, The Netherlands

"Good Morning, Night (Buongiorno, notte)" is an intriguing effort to understand terrorists.Loosely based on a novel, writer/director Marco Bellocchio specifically re-imagines the kidnapping of Italian party leader Aldo Moro in 1987, with heavy use of television clips. The quaintly naive Cold War rhetoric, emphasized with odd historic black and white newsreel interstices such as of Stalinist parades, may now be seen as an examination of a symbolic precursor for today's gruesome politics, though he was already working on the film at 9/11.The young idealists we are first introduced to seem as harmless as the radical pranksters in the contemporary "The Edukators (Die Fetten Jahre sind vorbei)." While it's a jolt to gradually learn their connection to the violent attack, first revealed as they cheer at the initial TV coverage, they seem so bumbling and nervous (one takes leave abruptly for, as it were, a conjugal visit as he feels he's the one being imprisoned; another gets fixated on an overly symbolic pet caged bird), it's never clear if they personally committed murder or if they're just the guardian cell taking orders from those who stage the mock trial and pull the triggers or if that is a moral difference that is intentionally considered irrelevant. Real world politics do occasionally seep through in silent background commentary, through factory strikes and sarcastic graffiti, but the determined ideologues reject these actions as they see themselves as the true believers. Ironically, the drone of the TV coverage, with reports of related and unrelated violent acts around the country, they anxiously watch becomes as much a recitation as the opening pitch from the bored apartment rental agent.Their Red Brigade aims seem so diffuse about intending to set off revolutions and counter-revolutions, compared to the more direct motives of the terrorists in "Paradise Now" (let alone how kidnapping has devolved into a business, as in "Secuestro Express"), at least to those not intimately familiar with Italian political dialectics, that it seems more understandable than ludicrous that the negotiations draw on. A long side bar scene where one of the kidnappers joins her family in a memorial service for World War II partisans nostalgically singing an anti-Fascist anthem, inspiring her to read a collection of letters resistance fighters wrote before their executions instead of her usual Lenin or Engels reading, makes the dialectics even more ironic as to what fascist behavior is. Her internal struggle to resolve these pressures, including several confusing dream sequences, is the core of the film and Maya Sansa, with very expressive eyes, is captivating as "Chiara." The kidnapping itself takes on a "Ransom of Red Chief" feel as the Aldo Moro character, well-played by Roberto Herlitzka and the point of the film's dedication to the auteur's father, is much more of an eloquent, dignified, paternal humanist statesman than a typical politician. The kidnappers seem to be thwarted in provoking political crisis because he will only write personal, non-political notes to his family, particularly his grandson (even if does seem as if he's writing love notes to his mistress rather than to his wife). But his appeal to the pope and the pope's involvement in the negotiations and their aftermath seems as incongruous as an odd séance by political supporters or the kidnappers doing a blessing before eating. Compared to the director's earlier "My Mother's Smile (L'Ora di religione: Il sorriso di mia madre)," religion is only an ancillary issue. The auteur's voice, as an artist, seems to speak through a somewhat naive and flirtatious friend of "Chiara"s who has written a screenplay about radicals and quotes the Emily Dickinson poem that inspired the title. He argues that the imagination can be a powerful force in influencing people, though of course the authorities misinterpret his involvement. I saw it with a defective soundtrack, but other than odd musical commentary with bombastic selections from "Aida" and Pink Floyd, the film's strength is faces and looking into the eyes of deluded cogs in the wheel of historical forces, though the best sequence is given away in the trailer.

The Italian national trauma of the kidnapping of Aldo Moro is a very interesting subject. A deed like that raises many questions. Why is anybody so obsessed by his ideals to kidnap the Italian president and subsequently murder him? How mentally ill is such a person? What emotions do you have when you are locked up for months in a row knowing that you'll probably gonna die? Hardly any of these questions is answered in the film. All you see is two hours of people walking through the appartment. The political discussions with Moro could give some insight in the motivations of the kidnappers but are superficial. It is as if only the uninteresting aspects of this kidnapping where filmed. There are also moving moments though: the letters of Moro to his family are heartbreaking.