THE OTHER WAY

The film which, although it stages football dynamics, focuses more on the human and emotional journeys of the two protagonists. Football therefore becomes a background and represents a dream that distances the boy protagonist from a social context of poverty and local petty crime with which the kids in the neighborhood coexist almost without realizing it. What we see in the film are a series of snapshots of is a series of insights into life that reflect the human details of the two protagonists who are as if dropped into limbo waiting for a new destination: an afternoon of children playing football and arguing on the pitch below the house, the encounter sought but unexpected with the football player collected in the stickers, a lunch based on fried fish in a restaurant on the sea, an adventurous night ride in a suburban nightclub, an unexpected car trip illuminated by the sun of friendship, a train whizzing over the nails Marcello put on the tracks to create knives ... In light of this, the key of the reading is very much based on a language that starts from the cinema of reality. Tight shots often close to the protagonists, in such a way as to enhance the interpretation of professional and non-professional actors (children), especially the little boy Marcello who expresses himself a lot with silences and looks. The most powerful emotions that surround the story, are translated in a way of reducing them to their essence and making them emerge naturally in a simple and centered narrative. Both Marcello and Andrea are lonely people, the meeting between the two in fact, although caused by various coincidences, ends up becoming a matter of necessity for both. The initial goals of the two will be nothing more than a pretext to find a filler for those gaps. Marcello will invest in an idol who will turn out to be far from the guide that he needed. Andrea will instead find in Marcello a new naive and genuine ideal of football, far from the nihilism and bad habits in which Andrea took refuge, and even if it will be too late to retrace his steps, the boy will give the player the strength to give one last burst of pride and put his conscience right, at least in part. Almost all the moments in the film are experienced through the eyes of Marcello, who observes everything intensely, from his peers, to his idol Andrea Viscomi, to the problems of his mother, to a boat, a horse, a prostitute, to danger, always on the lookout for of landmarks. Marcello cares a lot about Andrea, so much so that he ends up following him in training as well as in small daily chores. On the other hand, the presence of the footballer in his life becomes more and more indispensable for Marcello who, almost forgetting his goal of becoming a great footballer, begins to see in him almost a father figure. The ingenuity and enthusiasm that the boy brings with him are a real cure-all for Andrea who for years had been experiencing a difficult period of private and professional disillusionment. Loneliness in his daily life becomes an increasingly inevitable constant, moreover the end of his career forces him to deal with the fact that he will soon be left with no future and with little money on his part. To make him even more restless and worried, are the incursions into his life of different figures who blackmail him and press him to return to play as soon as possible so as not to lose the money of the “Totonero”. This deep bond of affinity, however, is interrupted by his mother Tereza when she discovers this friendship of which she is unaware and in her morbidity she feels her son almost stolen by Andrea. She realizes, however, that she cannot prevent this friendship for the sake of Marcello who has changed drastically in the meantime .. The final part of the film instead focus on Andrea, a man who seems to be reborn from the exchanges he had during the film with Marcello. Andrea now increasingly distant from Marcello after a dramatic event, will find the strength to come to terms with his conscience which for several weeks has been taking on the voice of the boy. With an act that may seem self-destructive because it will put him in contrast with the pacts made with the local underworld, but it will be nothing more than a way to get back to peace with himself. Before disappearing from circulation, Andrea passes by the hospital and places on Marcello's bed, the shirt from his last match as an indelible mark, as a thank you for the second chance he was given and as a token of apology for the dream he shattered.