Everything Calls for Salvation, review: the broken voices of an ignored silence
Everything Calls for Salvation, review
Everything Calls for Salvation, is the TV series available from 14 October on the Netflix catalog, based on the novel of the same name by Daniele Mencarelli (Strega Giovani 2020 award), which marks the return to directing by Francesco Bruni. This is a series that addresses some issues that we have seen this director join in the past, even if, in this specific case, from a completely new point of view translated from the gaze of the original author of the story. In 7 episodes, therefore, a narration unfolds that moves within the Italian hospital dimension, that of a TSO (compulsory health treatment), staging a reality of our life, of our daily life and of our society, which we tend always ignoring, putting aside pretending that it does not exist, totally concentrated on a concept of "normality" far from the facets that the human mind presents and can present every day.
Here is that from the single experience of his protagonist Everything Asks Salvation dramatically expands the spectrum of his possibilities, agglomerating everything that surrounds him and moving his gaze also on other patients (nowadays called users), on the hospital environment that should treat and protect them, on the staff of service, on professionals in the sector, on relatives and families of the sick and on the very way in which our society tends to absorb and above all g judging this kind of situations and problems, which have always existed.
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All Asks for Salvation: a story, many stories
The plot of All Asks for Salvation opens on Daniele (Federico Cesari), and remains anchored on him for the rest of the narrative. So in the brief and chaotic initial moments, made of unruly and festive youth, we begin to get to know our protagonist who, during a return home after an evening of revelry, collapses exhausted and disoriented on the bed in his bedroom. Then the darkness, compensated by some voices that immediately suggest us when he wakes up, assisted by some subjective shots, that he is no longer at home, surrounded by people he does not recognize and stuck in an unknown bed, in a room that is not has ever seen. The first impact with his surroundings is direct and without too many frills, as will be the minutes following his actual awakening.Everything asks for salvation The young man woke up in what seems to be a hospital room with other patients who, intrigued, approached him and his bed. He is in a TSO, someone has locked him up in a place with other people with mental problems, and he has no idea why. From this moment on, the true narration of All Asks for Salvation begins, with the protagonist himself who finds himself stuck in a context whose motivations he does not understand. He is not like other patients, according to him, he is normal, so why did they lock him up? What did he do? What about the wounds on his hand? Everything lies in the shadow of his own memory. The problem is that he doesn't remember anything. He will have to remain in the structure, under observation, for seven days, seven days in an extremely difficult context for him and for anyone who would wake up, in contact with people with even particular problems and a hospital staff who does not seem at all kind or condescending.
In fact, during his hospitalization days, Daniele will begin to relate both with his roommates and with the people who work in the facility. It is inevitable, even if in his first hours of stay we see him on the defensive and in a state of total repulsion towards everything and everyone. Everything Asks Salvation therefore opens the way to a path in which everything begins to tell something, almost a collection of contemporary testimonies, a set of stories to be aligned with that of the protagonist, of broken and imperfect narratives made of pain, acceptance or denial. A corollary of experiences, even difficult to digest, that gradually build with the protagonist a sort of routine no longer of circumstance but of real human interest and closeness. Thus flanked by Daniele we find the story of Mario (Andrea Pennacchi. A former teacher with a tragic past. A kind human being, the result of a series of difficult personal experiences), that of Gianluca (Vincenzo Crea) - a homosexual in eternal struggle with himself himself and with a family that does not want to accept him at any cost, that of Giorgio (Lorenzo Renzi) - a big man who has never recovered from a strong childhood trauma that has totally destroyed his personal balance, assisted by a series of therapies not too successful, that of Madonnina (Vincenzo Nemolato) - a man of whom absolutely nothing is known, since he does not speak, except for his dispassionate love for cigarettes and for fire - and that of Alessandro (Alessandro Pacioni) - a boy in a vegetative state since he was a child.
All of them are an integral and fundamental part of Everything Asks Salvation, representing the most sincere voices through which this TV series speaks. Alongside them we also find hospital staff played by Ricky Menphis, Filippo Nigro, Raffaella Lebbroni, ready to offer a further point of view on the issue, referring to the work-health problems of our country with their fleeting interventions and moments of professionalism. The result is a narrative framework with iridescent and complex nuances, inside which it is not easy to move, but which nevertheless tends to outline in a coherent way everything that happens in front of the camera. In a context that, however, is not very easy to tell, however, the narrative is never too unbalanced, oscillating between seemingly light moments and a continuous tragicity that continues to break into the scene, always remembering the reality of the situation that is being observed and in which we are.
Everything asks for salvation Thus in this sort of journey within oneself Daniele not only finds himself approaching a world that up to that moment he had openly avoided (as did most of the spectators), but also to confront himself and the mistakes he has made up to that moment. Then the character of Nina (Fotinì Peluso. A young career actress with problems in dealing with herself and with others) bursts onto the scene, and some of the reasons behind this introspective journey change further.
Writing as therapy
As in one of the best-known novels of Italian literature, La Conscienza di Zeno by Italo Svevo, the young protagonist finds himself trying to channel his problems through writing. Specifically, he dedicates himself to the drafting of some poems that in the course of the narration will further deepen the closed, conflictual and self-destructive character of Daniele. Thus the same creative process of writing becomes a fundamental tool through which to externalize what one has inside, giving it a shape and trying to transform what torments us into something more concrete. This will be one of the main weapons of the protagonist of the series, offering the viewers themselves a deeper look at the situation, coming to tell the deepest ravines of his main character with an immediate freshness that soon becomes the basis on which the voice itself is based. of history.Accepting oneself and one's neighbor, accepting and understanding one's own defects and those of others, moving in the maze of a self-analysis that carries on the entire narrative, embracing the other protagonists as well, even if continuously observed from the outside. The criticism of hospital conditions, personnel management, methods of intervention, the conditions of the ward, the few funds linked to the maintenance of hospitalized people, the general lack of interest in an aspect of society that has always existed, remain only the point of an iceberg that goes much deeper, touching some uncovered threads of a disarming delicacy, in which the families of people locked inside the structures are also fully included, in a ferocious reasoning that spares no one.
Everything calls for salvation
