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Director's Statement
For this film, it doesn't seem natural to talk about directing, camera movements, colours inspired by such or such a painter (or none at all),
editing, music, in other words filmic language and style because the style
in this film is what comes "after", "after" an initial image, an initial idea that set the whole story in motion. This image is simple to describe (despite
what the main character refers to as its "absurdity"): an ordinary man, Ernesto Picciafuoco, a painter, receives a visit from a priest who tells him that the beatification process is under way for his mother...
He knows nothing about this and never had the slightest notion of it, even though the whole process was launched more than three years previously... The news overwhelms him.
In addition, this insensitivity, the fact that he didn't sense or perceive the conspiracy under way and the now open attempt to convert him, along
with the aggravating circumstance of his artistic career, cast Ernesto into a
deep depression... or, rather, arouse a latent form of depression... Ernesto can no longer stand himself, he can no longer bear the deep-seated
cynicism and lack of affection that make him resemble his mother, who died tragically many years before... and whose "mortal" smile he now carries, despite his fruitless attempts to wipe it off his face (for a long time, I wavered between the final title "The Time of Religion" and another title, precisely "My Mother's Smile"...)
This secular character, distanced from religion for so long, discovers that he isn't entirely separated from it... Because, the priests would reply, that's impossible.
I have a different view and, sympathizing with the character, in which I recognize a great deal of myself, follow with him the very long but not necessarily endless path of a permanent separation (from the comfort of the Holy Father, "who even so grants the just man, whether he believes or not, a place in paradise," a line that I had to cut from the film and that was pronounced by Cardinal Piumini in his conversation with Ernesto Picciafuoco in the pauper's hostel...).
This is the true suspense that runs throughout the whole film. In this way, "The Time or Religion" could also be defined as a very odd thriller.