The Hand of God (Paolo Sorrentino, 2021) aka È stata la mano di Dio, wr. Paolo Sorrentino; Filippo Scotti, Toni Servillo, Teresa Saponangelo
My interpretation of the title is that it refers firstly to the incident in the 1986 World Cup which was won by Argentina by two goals (to one) scored by Diego Maradona, the first with a flick of his hand. At the time, Maradona said that it 'the hand of God', tho he later admitted it was his own merely mortal hand.
The other meaning probably refers to the destiny of the writer/director (of this film) to become a film-maker. One of the last scenes is between the Sorrentino character, Fabietto, and an actor representing the real-life director Antonio Capuano. The latter talks idealistic bullshit, but it establishes Fabio's amibition. The very last scene shows him dreaming his way presumably to Cinecittà.
It's not a great film, but does offer the opportunity to enter the imagined world of Sorrentino's youth. In this way, it's quite like some of Federico Fellini's films, particularly Amarcord (1973).
Wikipedia:
In the 1980s, young Fabietto (Filippo Scotti) lives at home in Naples with his father Saverio Schisa (Toni Servillo) and mother Maria Schisa (Teresa Saponangelo). He doesn’t have many friends or a lover and wants to study philosophy in college. For the time being, he's mainly listening to music and watching Diego Maradona playing for his home team, Napoli. His brother Marchino (Marlon Joubert) takes him to acting auditions and sympathizes with his affection for their emotionally troubled aunt Patrizia (Luisa Ranieri). Then, tragedy strikes the Schisa family and Fabietto comes of age in a cruel and brutal manner.
IMDb metascore: 76
100
The Hollywood Reporter
David RooneySep 2, 2021
It’s the work of a director in full command of his gifts, from the kaleidoscopic vignettes of family life that make the first half such a constant delight through the supple modulation of tone midway, when shocking tragedy prompts a shift into a more ruminative mood.
100
The Playlist
Rodrigo PerezSep 2, 2021
It’s a lovely, charming, vibrant, sad, bildungsroman tale and roman-fleuve that pays small tribute to Maradona. But more importantly, it manages to both memorialize this agonizing turning point in his life and warmly reminisce on the bliss that came before it.
90
The New York Times
A.O. ScottDec 15, 2021
I wouldn’t say that this movie is a distraction from reality, any more than I would call it a work of realism. It’s a beautiful tautology: a true-to-life movie about a life made for movies.
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)
Bilge EbiriDec 13, 2021
With previous films like the Oscar-winning Great Beauty and the politically charged biopics Il Divo and Loro, Sorrentino indulged his fondness for boisterous, bunga-bunga stylization. He is contemporary cinema’s mad poet of unchecked hedonism. But he holds himself back this time around. The Hand of God isn’t realistic or gritty (or, God forbid, subtle), but it is more subdued.
90
Wall Street Journal
Joe MorgensternDec 3, 2021
The Hand of God creates a reality that is by turns hilarious, heartbreaking and remarkable for its buoyancy and grace. It’s a film from the hand of a master.
90
The New Yorker
Anthony LaneNov 26, 2021
The Hand of God is most affecting when reality does intrude—not only when fate takes a terrible hand, piercing the family’s heart, but also in stretches of languor.
89
Austin Chronicle
Jenny NulfDec 9, 2021
It’s a personal, aching, and romantic film that’s swimming in the complicated trials of youth.
89
Paste Magazine
Andrew CrumpDec 3, 2021
Guided by Fabietto, the movie takes its time. It watches. It breathes. It captures life with a clarity even Sorrentino’s best efforts haven’t quite—which makes it his best effort to date.
88
RogerEbert.com
Simon AbramsDec 3, 2021
With his rich coming-of-age drama The Hand of God, Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino not only courts, but squashes comparisons to formative maestro Federico Fellini.
83
Entertainment Weekly
Leah GreenblattDec 7, 2021
There are more cohesive coming-of-age movies to be sure, and subtler ones. But God doesn't really try too hard to make it all make sense; it's just one boy's dolce vita, drenched in Mediterranean sun, hormones, and salt air.
83
IndieWire
David EhrlichSep 2, 2021
The Hand of God doesn’t always find the clearest way of knotting these various stories together, and the film’s second half — replete with so many highs — also feels like it leaves a number of important characters dangling in the wind.
80
Time
Stephanie ZacharekDec 20, 2021
The Hand of God is a lovely film, occasionally oddball in the best way, and astute in the way it handles tragedy and loss.
80
The Independent
Adam WhiteDec 3, 2021
The film is bawdy and wistful, with a rich vein of melancholy running through it.
80
Empire
Alex GodfreyDec 3, 2021
This charmingly odd tribute to Sorrentino’s formative years is slighter than it possibly deserves to be, but when it’s this handsome, who cares? Will have you absolutely salivating for Italy.
80
The Irish Times
Donald ClarkeDec 3, 2021
Paolo Sorrentino’s soothing, funny, occasionally infuriating The Hand of God sits somewhere between the irresistible sentimentality of the Branagh drama and the more complex harmonies of Cuarón’s bildungsfilm.
80
The Guardian
Peter BradshawDec 1, 2021
It would be really obtuse not to marvel at the exuberance, energy and vivid moment-by-moment immediacy of this movie: Sorrentino is a film-maker who is always on the move, on the attack.
80
Time Out
Phil de SemlyenSep 2, 2021
Things in The Hand of God are often funny and sad – all at the same time.
80
The Telegraph
Robbie CollinSep 2, 2021
Sorrentino and his cast make these teenage recollections twinge with freshness. Like our own sharpest memories of adolescence, the haze of nostalgia doesn’t dull their edge.
80
Screen Daily
Jonathan RomneySep 2, 2021
The boisterousness remains, as does the unreconstructed maleness that has often been a jarring mannerism in his work. But new intimacy also yields a lightness and tenderness that are a welcome addition to Sorrentino’s palette.
75
Uproxx
Vince ManciniDec 18, 2021
Hand of God is a charming, frequently funny coming-of-age tale shot so exquisitely that it would make any Italian-American angry at his ancestors.
75
Boston Globe
Mark FeeneyDec 16, 2021
These characters are so vibrant and the episodes so richly imagined that it’s easy to overlook how shapeless The Hand of God is. The film has the vividness of memory, but also the structure of memory, which is to say no real structure at all. Visually, though, the movie is of a piece; it’s Sorrentino’s eye that holds it together.
75
ReelViews
James BerardinelliDec 14, 2021
The meandering nature of the screenplay causes the movie to seem overlong as it noticeably loses momentum following a key coming-of-age moment. The episodes that follow don’t seem as fully realized as the ones that come before and, by the time The Hand of God ends, it’s floundering. On the whole, however, this is a charming and at times moving reminder of what it meant to be young in the 1980s.
75
The Associated Press
Jake CoyleDec 1, 2021
Paolo Sorrentino’s films can be overwrought, grotesque and uneven but they are rarely not alive. His latest, The Hand of God, is a catalog of wonders — of miracles both banal and eternal.
70
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Chandler LevackDec 7, 2021
There is something magical in Sorrentino’s tender, flawed familial portrait that risks social taboos. I’d rather watch something beautiful and dumb vying for real emotional truth than the woke-est and most sanitized cinema, which only wants my approval. The Hand of God is a sprawling, gorgeous mess, but one you can’t look away from – and it might just break your heart.
70
Little White Lies
Sophie Monks KaufmanDec 3, 2021
The dynamic of the central four is a pleasure incarnate. Equal parts funny and warm, each actor brings a specific dynamism that, when combined with the rest, crackles with life and love.
70
Los Angeles Times
Robert AbeleDec 1, 2021
The first hour’s parade of oddballs and exaggerated vignettes under the bright Neapolitan pop of Daria D’Antonio’s cinematography can be broad to a fault, but there’s an honest perspective at work about what lands in an awkward boy’s memory.
67
Original-Cin
Thom ErnstDec 2, 2021
The Hand of God lacks the imagination and mysticism that elevated The Great Beauty from being just a navel-gazing narrative about film. And the movie's presumptions about sexuality and coming-of-age are far too male-centric to be comfortably amusing.
67
The A.V. Club
Leila LatifDec 1, 2021
It has as many superfluous sequences as great ones, with moments that serve no grander purpose than landing a single joke.
63
Slant Magazine
William RepassNov 30, 2021
Throughout Paolo Sorrentino’s film, the line between miracle and cosmic prank, even tragedy, is rendered indistinguishable.
60
The Guardian
Xan BrooksSep 2, 2021
The Hand of God, no surprise, is Sorrentino’s most nakedly personal film to date, almost to a fault in the way it jettisons the cool distance of The Great Beauty or Il Divo in favour of a sweaty, close-up evocation of youth. It’s a picture only Sorrentino could make. But that doesn’t necessarily make him the safest pair of hands.
58
The Film Stage
Jared MobarakSep 11, 2021
We might still miss Sorrentino’s prior, more unforgiving tone, and his sleek filmmaking style; it’s arguable this material doesn’t mine the best of his strengths.
50
Movie Nation
Roger MooreDec 9, 2021
As random as it all is, The Hand of God does add up to a “movie” in the broadest sense, just not a very coherent or interesting one.
50
Washington Post
Ann HornadayDec 1, 2021
For all its beauty and poignancy, The Hand of God suffers from a strange paradox: It goes on too long but somehow doesn’t go far enough.
50
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalleDec 1, 2021
In essence, Sorrentino thought his way up to the middle of The Hand of God and assumed the rest would take care of itself. He started filming too soon. His screenplay needed work.
50
Variety
Owen GleibermanSep 2, 2021
The Hand of God has some good scenes, but it’s the kind of portrait-of-an-artist drama where you watch the insults, the clashes, the assaultive attitude of it all and you think: Is this what it was actually like for the young Sorrentino growing up in Naples? Or does he simply have an aversion to scenes that don’t hit you over the head
40
TheWrap
Dan CallahanSep 2, 2021
It might be hoped that the passage of time could give him some fond or melancholy distance from such material, but Sorrentino serves up his memories in an unappealingly inert and flat manner.
IMDb page.
Wikipedia page.
Garry Gillard | New: 9 March, 2022 | Now: 9 March, 2022