Guilt and consequences are two of the toughest burdens to bear. Our choices can, and often do, come back to haunt not only ourselves, but those around us. From Italy comes an epic tale of a mobster faced with this very problem. The Traitor is based on the true story of Tommaso Buscetta (Pierfrancesco Favino), a high-ranking member of the Sicilian Mafia. In the midst of an early 1980’s mob war over the heroin trade that claims the lives of two of his sons, Antonio and Benedetto (Paride and Gabriele Cicirello) and his brother, Tommaso is found hiding out in Brazil and is arrested and extradited to Italy. Disillusioned by the murders of his family members, Tommaso decides to meet with Judge Giovanni Falcone (Fausto Russo Alesi) and become the first major member of Cosa Nostra to cooperate with authorities.
What motivates Tommaso throughout The Traitor, and is the film’s primary thematic focus, is the guilt he carries for what his life in Cosa Nostra has cost his family. Most notably this includes the deaths of Antonio and Benedetto, but also the burden placed upon his smaller children and wife Cristina. It is one thing for us to carry the weight of our sins ourselves, but when our loved ones must also suffer due to what we’ve done, that cost is often the final straw for most. The Traitor does a fantastic job of using metaphor and symbolism to aid in telling its story. As Thommaso is arrested and begins the extradition process from Brazil back to Italy, he begins experiencing health problems; first from attempted suicide through the use of strychnine then an episode on a plane back to Europe. His episodes coincide with the specter of accountability. Having to face what he did, and what happened to his sons as a result, resulted in dread and guilt so strong he has a physical reaction.
As we see in a story spanning decades, Tommaso will have to live with the consequences of what he has done for the rest of his life, looking over his shoulder for the rest of his days. Pierfrancesco Favino does a fantastic job in his portrayal of Tommaso after his cooperation as a man paranoid and fearful of what could come next, an expert on what’s always lurking partly because of his previous life as the one for whom those indebted to their misdeeds would never be safe from. Director Marco Bellocchio most effectively portrays this in an incredibly tense scene set during Christmas in New Hampshire as the Buscettas hide out in witness protection. As the family sits to order drinks, a singer dressed as Santa Claus switches from English to Italian, proclaiming his Sicilian heritage as he walks right up to the Buscettas table and sings directly in front of Tommaso. The scene is anxiety-inducing as you’re unsure if Tommaso is going to be shot right there in the restaurant with his wife and children, forcefully pulling the audience into the same wary mindset as the film’s protagonist. We feel the paranoia that Tommaso must live with forever.
While the weight of guilt and the consequences that follow are the main focus of The Traitor, one scene in particular involving Salvatore Contorno offered an additional examination worth considering. Contorno’s lamentation of what dealing in the heroin trade had turned the Sicilian mafia into served as a topical treatise on greed that draws parallels to debates currently happening within our own society. In their pursuit of the riches that come with drug trafficking, Cosa Nostra has begun to abandon its once unshakable principles, delving out hits on uninvolved families, children, and women in order to maximize profit and maintain its grip on power. In his testimony before an Italian court, Contorno explained how this shift shook his commitment and belief in Cosa Nostra, how their betrayal of their moral code exposed them as unworthy of his continued loyalty or basic respect. Contorno’s crisis of conscience mirrors our own general populace’s continued loss of faith in modern institutions as blatant corruption and greed culminating in billionaire excess and stagnant wages for the majority of households turns people against organizations and belief sets they once held sacrosanct.
The Traitor is an epic tale of a gangster faced with the reality of his choices that includes the action usually associated with mob dramas, but also introspection of what the life leads to along with a bit of social commentary applicable to our own current societal strife. Marco Bellocchio is able to craft very intense moments in the film, from the courtroom drama scenes depicting cross-examination of Tommaso and the reactions of his former crime syndicate peers to the previously mentioned scene in New Hampshire where Tommaso was subtly confronted in the restaurant. I also appreciated his visual storytelling attempts, in particular a match cut of a tiger in a cage during a flashback to happier times for Tommaso flashed forward to an Italian trial where a beasts of a different kind, incarcerated mobsters, were seething in cages as Tommaso prepared to speak against them. Or Tommaso’s always being dressed in contrasting colors to his contemporaries, a white suit while others wore black, to symbolize his alternate path. Bellocchio also balances the multiple time periods as we track Tommaso’s cooperation across decades with care, making it easy to follow along and accurately depicting each era. The film does turn a little tedious toward the end, making it feel every bit of its two and a half hour runtime. Despite its pacing issues, this gangster epic is a worthwhile watch.
Image: Sony Pictures Classics
