‘Exterior Night' Review: Life in Perilous Times

New York Times

25-02-2025

When the great Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio made 'Good Morning, Night' in 2003, about the 1978 kidnapping and killing of the politician Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades, he provided a fanciful, heartbreaking coda: an image of Moro walking away from captivity, looking not much worse for wear after 55 days in a small cell.
Bellocchio revisits the Moro affair in his first television series, 'Exterior Night,' and once again he frees Moro (Fabrizio Gifuni) for just a bit. This time the scholarly, prickly statesman gets to stare down his colleagues in Italy's Christian Democratic Party and tell them exactly how and why they have allowed him to die.
(Released in 2022, the series is now available in the United States on MHz Choice, where the third and fourth of six episodes will stream beginning Tuesday.)
Moro's abduction and death was a watershed moment in the 'years of lead,' when politically motivated bombings, shootings, kidnappings and assassinations convulsed Italy and other European countries. But it is a story that can speak to anyone who has a sense of living in perilous times. As a character in 'Exterior Night' says, a society can tolerate a certain amount of crazy behavior, but 'when the crazy party has the majority, we'll see what happens.'
What makes Moro's fate such prime material for dramatization, though, are its elements of mystery and imponderability and its hints of conspiracy, as murky today as they were four decades ago. Why did Moro's own government — of which he would have become president later that year — refuse to negotiate for his release? Why did the Red Brigades finally kill him, knowing it probably would be disastrous for their cause?
'Good Morning, Night,' told from the point of view of a female captor who begins to sympathize with Moro, was a splendid film, both passionate and razor sharp. Working across five and a half hours in 'Exterior Night,' Bellocchio spreads out, adding historical detail and giving space to players he had little or no room for in the film.
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