The Thing

A documentary recording the dissolution of the Italian Communist Party. At the end of 1989 the party's general secretary proposed changing its name and its symbol. The proposal caused enormous argument in the membership and meetings were held in branches across the country. Nanni Moretti took a camera to those meetings. He travelled from Naples to Sicily, from Milan to Turin, from Rome to Bologna, and recorded what was said. There is no commentary. No narrator, no questions, no experts. Only people standing up in a hall and speaking: some crying, some shouting, some saying that something they carried for forty years is over, some arguing that the change is necessary. That is its value: the direct record of a political tradition reckoning with itself. The meetings were filmed within a few weeks and the film was broadcast on television just before the congress. Nanni Moretti directed. A rare record for anyone who likes documentary and political history. For a viewer who does not know the context, the film explains nothing and starts in the middle of the argument.