Il Capo by Yuri Ancarani

While watching this short film, the word "monument" came to me often, for many reasons. “Monument” can have different meanings: an object of great proportions or heroic scale, an exceptional example of something, “having the quality of being larger than life”, or just another meaning for statue. In a way, all of these ideas apply perfectly to Il Capo.

The “capo” (“head” in Italian, as in “leader”) is a man working in a gigantic and empty place in Carrara, Italy, where white marble is extracted from massive rocks. Being the only one of its kind, this marble is extremely precious and expensive, which makes its extraction a risky activity, demanding a large degree of experience and precision.

The capo stays on top of the rocks, giving subtle directions to a man inside a machine with mechanical arms. Just like the conductor and his orchestra, a small gesture of the fingers indicates how fast the machine can go; a twist of the wrist communicates the need to change the angle of its arms. Il Capo operates in constant tension between the toughness of the physical work and the delicacy of the product extracted, between the immense size of the environment and the insignificant presence of the lonely men in it.

Director Yuri Ancarani understands perfectly the dimensions (both physical and artistic) of this project and proposes a mute ballet of tons of rocks being demolished, mechanical arms flying in all directions, and one single hand commanding the whole show. He manages to build frames and angles that are quite unusual in cinema, meant to turn the operation into an even bigger spectacle. Aesthetically and geographically speaking, this is a monumental work.

By Bruno Carmelo