doublesquids Review of Happy as Lazzaro

Happy as Lazzaro (2018)

Rip van Winkle meets Albert Camus somewhere in an Italian homeless camp.

[8/10 · 13 December 2018]

The French philosopher Albert Camus once wrote, "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free as to make one's own existence an act of rebellion." In this quirky but spellbinding absurdist Italian movie, an engaging young man, both saint and wolf, manages to pull that off with style. Rip Van Winkle was a character in an old American tale who stays asleep for 20 years, waking up when all has changed. In "Lazzaro felice," young Lazzaro does much of the same, falling into a fever delirium on a grim tobacco plantation where labor laws are violated with impunity, and ending, after waking up, in a homeless encampment, with old acquaintances having aged grotesquely. Lazzaro' rebellion is against hard-hearted people and economic adversity which would crush his soul, but he fights being crushed all the way to a bittersweet end. Not a cheerful movie or an easy plot to follow, but one worth watching, contemplating, and admiring.