Hailed as the Italian brutal response to the likes of Sicario (2015) and HBO’s True Detective (2014), Suburra—both the 2015 feature and the 2017 Netflix 10-part series—pries open the proverbial can of worms on the biggest national scandal... more
Hailed as the Italian brutal response to the likes of Sicario (2015) and HBO’s True Detective (2014), Suburra—both the 2015 feature and the 2017 Netflix 10-part series—pries open the proverbial can of worms on the biggest national scandal in decades, renamed “Mafia Capital” and involving an intricate web of connections between politics, criminality and the Vatican. This chapter analyses and compares select reports from the still-ongoing inquiry and related trials that inspired the original 2013 novel (written by reporter Carlo Bonini and magistrate-turned-crime writer Giancarlo De Cataldo) to the approach of both screen adaptations. All push mythical archetypes and popular genre over-codification to extreme levels as if, as one reviewer put it, “genre was the only way to get to the facts.”
Hailed as the Italian brutal response to the likes of Sicario (2015) and HBO’s True Detective (2014), Suburra—both the 2015 feature and the 2017 Netflix 10-part series—pries open the proverbial can of worms on the biggest national scandal... more
Hailed as the Italian brutal response to the likes of Sicario (2015) and HBO’s True Detective (2014), Suburra—both the 2015 feature and the 2017 Netflix 10-part series—pries open the proverbial can of worms on the biggest national scandal in decades, renamed “Mafia Capital” and involving an intricate web of connections between politics, criminality and the Vatican. This chapter analyses and compares select reports from the still-ongoing inquiry and related trials that inspired the original 2013 novel (written by reporter Carlo Bonini and magistrate-turned-crime writer Giancarlo De Cataldo) to the approach of both screen adaptations. All push mythical archetypes and popular genre over-codification to extreme levels as if, as one reviewer put it, “genre was the only way to get to the facts.”
