Gomorrah, the grand finale: “Better to die alive, love will win”

The trouble is that Genny Savastano says that suspended sentence with Genny’s face and while he looks at Ciro Di Marzio with Ciro’s face and a shiver runs: “The final season will make love win”. A threatening promise. But where had this love not reached for four seasons hidden? From Friday 19 on Sky and streaming on Now, the fifth and final season of the “Gomorrah” phenomenon that has irremediably changed the way of conceiving television series will be seen. Last act signed Sky Original, produced by Cattleya in collaboration with Betafilm, direction and artistic supervision by Marco D’amore and Claudio Cupellini, protagonists Salvatore Esposito, Marco D’amore, Ivana Lotito and Arturo Muselli, from an idea written by Roberto Saviano with Leonardo Fasoli and Maddalena Ravagli.
An ambitious job that of wanting to tell the world through Naples and the peripheries of that world through Scampia. It took the courage that comes from history and the challenge to go far beyond books and films and thus to stage a black theme, centered on the evil that takes its origins from the Greek tragedy but which is hinged in the absolute contemporaneity, taking up large spaces of deepening. So much effort paid off, fifty-eight episodes in total, considering the ten of this farewell; a product sold in over 190 countries that raised the turnover of the Italian series to 100 million euros; a language distorted right into the bowels of a Neapolitan who is “Secondiglianese” narrowly understandable only in the stomach but who is capable of conferring philosophical resilience to the narrative. Simultaneously with yet another feud of the Camorra that in these hours bloody the streets of the Neapolitan bonlieu, as Roberto Saviano informs us, here is the end of a cult at the height of success because, as wisely claims the producer Riccardo Tozzi di Cattleya, “better die alive and always maintain high quality. Woe to those successful series which, precisely by virtue of happy numbers, go on to become impoverished “.
So much honor, so many detractors and so many keys to reading, it is the creation of a world in which the viewer plunges, it is the royal court of a Shakespearean drama that does not take into account the consequences. All shot on the spot, Tozzi insists, “strong in a heritage of neorealism that is characteristic of Italy, married to a deep adherence to gender codes”. “There is a before and after Gomorrah – says Salvatore Esposito – which created a system and developed a territory. Scampia is no longer the one of our beginnings, a movement was born that is regaining its legality and does so on the spot. “. And in this counterpart of the commedia dell’arte where everyone wears a mask and represents themselves as they would like to be, Marco D’amore reveals: “We were poised on a thread holding hands, feeling the responsibility of the story on our skin. It was difficult: living with this material, in that territory. As a man it made me more understanding towards those who made certain choices because they had other stories behind them. It changed my life “. And in this universe of self-conscious losers, the true love story is actually a story of friendship between two men who breathe their poison on each other and can’t do without each other. Here is the beginning of the new season with the great return of Ciro Di Marzio who will face the fugitive Genny Savastano in single combat. A story of friendship that passes from the set to the life of Salvatore and Marco: “I remember our first meeting, eight years ago, at the auditions. A chemistry was immediately triggered that influenced the writing. Genny had to die but our physical attraction and sentimental prevailed. Being friends was everything and we found it in the classic criminal dynamic that crosses the colors of their emotions. Genny and Ciro, a love story based on the things that will be said compared to what will be done “. Salvatore Esposito echoes him: “Gomorrah was a difficult journey, I grew up as a man and as an artist. Now we are experiencing the end of a relationship: at first you are euphoric, then there comes a moment when you think back to all the past and inside you feel melancholy, but you are aware that you have given more than your best “.