M onicelli I met him twice. The first was in 2002, during an interview granted to one of my fellow students. We went to his house, in Monti district, and I was amazed how the interiors were colored youth. Taste and simplicity. No redundancy, no display of awards and photos, as I have seen on other occasions. A house as a young intellectual eighty-seven years. He exhibited his polite detachment but remained friendly with us, emozionantissimi film students. So excited that I sbagliai focus even remember the picture I snapped. He, used to interviews, answered all questions, without exception, although judging from her expression's played some discounted.
I asked him a dedication to him of the monograph series of the Beaver, and he made me without batting an eyelid. I was a simpleton.
few years later I had also become a citizen of Rome, Rione Monti and was one of my favorite neighborhoods. One evening, as it approached midnight, my companion pointed to surprise someone on the other side of the road. It was Monicelli. A firm step he walked into the small entrance door of the building where he lived. He had a stick, but it seemed not to have too much need. He slipped in and disappeared. I looked time, by instinct: the twenty-three and fifty-five. Monicelli i had just turned 92 years old, and came home at midnight, alone. I thought it would be nice to get to that age as he had arrived there: light, lucid, coherent, and still at work, from time to time.
Yesterday as I received news of his death, I first thought it was a brave and bold, then it was a cowardly towards himself and everyone else, then I did not know what to think, and I realized that not reviews were to be given, nor could it be otherwise. This morning, the newspapers helped me to understand much: I found the usual predictable words: shock, great director, clarity, pain, grief, half-mast. So what will all this mean? I do not know if anyone can really claim to know. And maybe not even know him. But he died for his decision, he died flying, died in the full right to do and say what he wanted.
And perhaps the thought of all that would necessarily follow, that is, the carousel of mourning, politicians and politicians are ready to give their superfluous and presumptuous interpretation of streets, squares and suddenly reviews to devote to him (or his death?) of big words, titles of newspapers, flowers and unanswered questions, perhaps, the thought of all this, while declaring ready to move on, Mario Monicelli breathed the air in Rome for the last time and found himself smiling.
It's best to leave it? Frege (forse!) everything and everyone? Only a person who lived and thought how he can seriously think about an ending like this. He could.
It's best to leave it? Frege (forse!) everything and everyone? Only a person who lived and thought how he can seriously think about an ending like this. He could.
"Because I know myself - would have said 'his' Marchese del Grillo - and you ... you're not a dick."
PD