Marx Can Wait (Marx può aspettare)

On 16th December 2016,

Letizia, Piergiorgio, Maria Luisa, Alberto and I, Marco,

the surviving Bellocchio brothers and sisters,

were reunited with the wives, children and grandchildren,

at the Union Circle in Piacenza

to celebrate various birthdays.

I had organized the lunch thinking to do a film about my family,

but I didn't have any clear ideas yet.

I didn't know what exactly I wanted to do.

There was concern, given the old age of all of us brothers,

that it could be the last chance to be together alive.

But in reality there was another purpose.

It is a peaceful, cheerful day.

I'm here with my wife, with my daughter Camilla,

with my mother, with all of you, relatives and friends.

I only have one regret, or rather, two big regrets.

The big regret,

a pain that I've been carrying around for many years,

is that dad is not with us.

Tonino, my father.

And there is no Uncle Camillo.

I met him...

but was one year old when he passed away.

But...

But everyone has spoken to me of Camillo like of an angel,

that he was a cheerful, beautiful person,

a positive person.

Anyway, long live dad, long live Camillo and all of us.

Long live!

Long live Tonino!

You were right to remember that.

How I miss Tonino!

Camillo, the angel, is the protagonist of this film.

Second world war had broken out with the invasion of Poland

on September 1, 1939,

two months before our birth, on November 9, 1939.

We did not witness your birth.

Mom said: "The nurse helped me with Marco."

"Then", she said,

"there was another one."

- So I was born first. - Yup.

After three hours Camillo was born, mother said.

- It was a difficult birth. - He was born asphyxiated.

He had gone all black.

Then mom was very...

She sent for the priest

because mom was very obsessed.

She thought he was born dead and she wanted to have him baptized.

Remember that portrait that Giorgio has in his house?

That priest came to the house three times to baptize Camillo.

- So... - No, twice, the third time in the parish.

So he was baptized three times.

Twice in the house because he looked like he was going to die.

I see.

- All right... - Marco just once.

Even then Mom was obsessed about hell and heaven.

She had to baptize him...

He would have ended up in limbo, not in heaven.

Limbo, yes.

If he wasn't baptized, he would have ended up in limbo.

There was also a limbo, understand?

But it wasn't a bad place.

It wasn't a bad place, limbo.

- It seems that now the Church... - They took it off.

They removed it, it no longer exists. Limbo is gone.

- Maybe even purgatory... No, hell. - Purgatory exists.

It exists.

So if one is not baptized?

I do not know.

They go to heaven anyway.

They go to Heaven? I understand.

TOWARDS THE PEOPLE

We grew up on artificial milk and one support nurse for the first few months.

My mother always suffered from not having milk.

I saw them after six months.

I was in boarding school.

I remember I was at the table, ready to have breakfast.

The superior tells me:

"Bellocchio, two little brothers were born."

- Twin brothers. - Two little brothers.

I didn't remember that Mom...

- I didn't notice that Mom was so... - Pregnant.

I didn't realize it, because she was never...

Very big.

I imagined that mom

had taken two poor people.

The poor always came to the door.

They had small children and my mother did charity.

Maybe Mom had taken two of their children.

When I came home, I saw you.

You were sitting at the table, looking at me.

You were awake.

Yes, I was happy,

but I didn't understand that children were born of a woman.

I hadn't figured it out yet.

No!

I found out after the war.

Maria told me:

"So you don't know how they are born?"

She said to me: "Have you seen a cow?"

"Have you seen a calf be born of a cow?

Then she said:

"It's the same, a woman does this too."

Aaaah...

Hail the Duce!

10 JUNE 1940

Fighters

of land, sea, air.

Black shirts of the revolution and of the legions,

listen to me!

The declaration of war

has already been delivered to the ambassadors

of Great Britain and France.

13 JULY 1944, PIACENZA

Because of the bombing

we left Piacenza and we went to Castell'Arquato.

28 APRIL 1945 LIBERATION OF PIACENZA

When the war was over we immediately returned to the city.

My father was afraid that

families without a home had occupied our apartment.

From October we went to school,

first grade at San Vincenzo.

In spring,

without understanding anything,

we little ones helped with the referendum campaign of 2 June 1946.

The referendum between monarchy and republic

was a defeat for our family.

The women had all voted for monarchy,

and my father too.

Umberto II, the May King, had to go.

We passed from San Vincenzo to the Pietro Giordani public school.

We stayed there up to the fifth grade.

Camillo and I, always in class together.

School and church were very close to home.

Our parish was Sant'Antonino,

named after a little-known Christian martyr,

patron saint of Piacenza.

We received our Communion and Confirmation in one day

and the evening before Confession, three sacraments in 24 hours.

For the political elections of 18 April 1948,

the priests managed to scare us a lot.

Communist terror, fear to be torn from the family

just because we were educated in atheism in state colleges.

Suffering from cold, hunger, dirt,

the expropriation of houses and farms,

the fear of having to deny the Christian faith,

not so much for the condemnation of eternal flames, but for martyrdom.

To suffer martyrdom,

as in the times of the Roman emperors.

I was terrified of martyrdom

and for sure I would have denied all my faith.

The terror of hell

was something that was instilled

with a violence, with a perfidy,

something that could also...

go beyond physics.

Fear,

even if you don't believe,

can come back to you like a nightmare.

Let the Holy Year be for everyone

a year of purification and sanctification,

of internal life and repair.

A year of the great return and of great forgiveness.

Give, Lord,

peace in our day.

Peace to souls,

peace to families, peace to the fatherland,

peace between nations.

In the passage from the first to the seventh grade,

there was the discovery of the sea,

which Camillo and myself had never seen.

The salty water of the sea.

Our water experience were the rivers,

the streams, the Po,

the Trebbia, the Arda

in which I learned to swim, to float.

Fresh, sweet water.

Camillo had also learned to swim,

but he struggled a lot to float.

An older friend looking at him shouted from the shore:

"Camillo, are you drowning? Do you need help?"

As if after each and every stroke he could disappear into the bottom.

When we were in the seventh grade,

the family moved in an apartment of an owned building

in Via Poggiali 41.

I got the room with Alberto.

Camillo had to sleep with Paolo.

Camillo did not rebel against having to stay with Paolo,

the madman.

He slept for a few years with a 10-year-older brother

who spoke to himself, screamed, laughed and had a loud voice.

Madonna! Enough, enough, enough!

Keep calm, please.

Calm.

Damn fools!

Why was I born?

- Do not do that. - Damn!

Damn my mom!

Cursed all of them and all the saints!

Our Father who art in heaven...