If one goes into Below the Clouds looking for the dramatic eruptions of similarly themed films such as Fire of Love and Dante’s Peak, there is not much luck to be had. Gianfranco Rosi’s take on the famed Vesuvius is much more concerned with the quietness that permeates life around the volcano, the ordinary quality of everyday routine standing in direct opposition to the trepidation of building a home on the margins of the unpredictable natural beast that extinguished the thriving ancient Roman city of Pompeii over two thousand years ago.
Named after the Jean Cocteau quote that states “Vesuvius makes all the clouds of the world,” the doc is shot in luscious black and white, foregoing both the deep reds and oranges of lava and the bright blues and purples of the sky. Rosi spends his film observing what happens under the limits of this particular stratosphere, picturing the ever-cinematic Naples from the point of view of archaeologists, emergency line workers and regular townsfolk, with footage captured over a period of three years and presented from a fixed camera viewpoint and without voice over narration.
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While recent works Notturno and Fire at Sea saw Rosi tackle current sociopolitical crises head-on, Below the Clouds prances around issues of displacement and war with a much more muted approach. The camera sits still as two men languidly exercise in the claustrophobic gym of a boat, their conversation slowly revealing their predicament as Syrian labourers unable to return to their war-torn country. The Ukrainian grain they are currently transporting, finally allowed to enter Italy once again, speaks to yet another consequence of conflict.
The extended excavation sequences help evoke questions of belonging and legacy, the steady fingers of specialists showing great care to bodies buried under centuries of debris, the land they once called home irrevocably changed by the hands of time and nature. As we hear of illicit tunnels dug by tomb robbers and art thieves, the care by the archaeologists is replaced by the hurried cruelty of greed, walls once filled with art and life suddenly made a bleak gallery to selfishness.
Despite the sombreness of such existential questionings, Below the Clouds finds much-needed lightness when it veers into the switchboard of the Naples Fire Department. Whenever the director lets the delightfully comical calls take centre place, one wishes this would morph into a Frederick Wiseman affair, and we could just stay within the walls of the lively office, endlessly listening to thick Neapolitan accents tell long-winded stories of trapped cats and broken clocks and unrelated preoccupations. In a striking tonal reversal, the filmmaker last employs the phone lines to relay a story of great violence, this dissonance between the mundane and the life-shattering a testament to the documentary’s thesis.
That being said, Below the Clouds demands a certain sprightliness of those ready to tackle it, the lulling nature of the footage proving tiresome when unbroken by the dynamism of something like the emergency line or an elderly man trying to introduce his young grandson to the marvels of Les Misérables. Longtime Rosi fans, however, already familiar with the rhythms of the Italian filmmaker, are in for a beautiful, sprawling treat.