Stanno Tutti Bene

Stanno Tutti Bene, (Everybody’s Fine), is a film directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. The film was released in 1990, which was two years after his award-winning film, Nuovo Cinema Paradiso. Stanno Tutti Bene’s main character is Matteo Scuro, who is played by Marcello Mastroianni. He is a seventy-four year old widower, who talks aloud to his dead wife, Angela. He sets out from his home in Sicily, Italy to visit his five children who are scattered throughout the mainland Italy. His children have failed to come to Sicily this year where he has rented five bungalows for them by the coast. He would like to have all his children around his dinner table again for just one night. He named his children all after opera characters. Their names are: Guglielmo, Alvara, Norma, Tosca, and Canio. The theme of this film is loneliness in modern Italy. Tornatore uses a blue-filter, mise-en-scene, and dialogue to convey the theme of loneliness. I will show how each of these contributes to the theme of this film.

Tornatore uses a blue filter to represent the theme of loneliness. The first set of frames that he uses a blue filter on is the ballroom scene. Matteo goes on a day trip with other senior citizens, which begins on the coast and ends in a ballroom. We sense loneliness as they waltz around the blue-lit ballroom. Even the dialogue fills us in on their isolation. Matteo gets winded and his dancing partner helps him to a seat at a table. There she tells him about her children and how they have placed her in a nursing home. She states that they have grown apart from her. Close-ups of their faces allow us to see their sadness. The blue filter and music heightens our sympathy for these two characters.

The second time the blue filter is used is after Matteo leaves his daughter’s Norma’s house and wanders through the blue night with his suitcase in hand. He has just overheard Norma’s husband say that he wished Matteo would leave. He looks forlorn in the darkness as he waits for a train to come along. A homeless man, who is trying to sleep in a cardboard box, calls to him. He tells Matteo that the train will not come till the morning and points to a cardboard box where he can sleep. The homeless man represents loneliness. There in the blue-lit darkness of a cardboard box we see Matteo’s face and glasses close-up. He looks vulnerable as he whistles. He hallucinates that his children are standing before him.

Matteo first sees his daughter Norma as a little girl as she comes out of a blue mist. She approaches Matteo and reveals her secret, which is that she does not live with her husband anymore. Then he hears several whistles as each of his other four children appear in the mist and approach him. They all reveal their secrets to him except for Alvara, who appears only in flashbacks because he died before the time in which the story takes place. All during these blue-filtered frames Matteo is peering out at them from his cardboard box.

Mise-en-scene and dialogue are both used to convey loneliness in the dinner scene. Matteo manages to get Guglielmo and Canio together to have dinner with him at a restaurant. He has a table set for all his children, but they are the only ones to come. We view them from the end of the table, which appears ten feet away causing us to feel Matteo’s desperation. Guglielmo and Canio tell Matteo that Alvara committed suicide by rowing out to sea, where he died. We see the back of Matteo’s head and his sons’ profiles, but are not brought forward to see Matteo’s expression until they finish. In defiance, Matteo scolds them for believing such nonsense. He says that he does not believe that anyone can die of loneliness in modern Italy. It is inconceivable to him because there are telephones, computers, and mass transit. The audience is left in amazement, because it is so apparent that Matteo is lonely. How can it be inconceivable to him that a person could die of loneliness?

In the final scene, we see Matteo at Angela’s grave. We are shown a close-up of her tomb, which contains a photograph of her. Matteo tells Angela that the kids “are just fine”. He kisses his hand and places the kisses on her photograph as if she were fragile. This scene shows us how lonely Matteo is without his wife. He has chosen not to move on.

Tornatore’s film, Stanno Tutti Bene, takes us on a journey with a lonely, yet proud older man. We feel his loneliness through the blue filters. These are his blue moods. The mise-en-scene allows us to see his sadness through the camera lens and the dialogue haunts us. In this modern world, with all of its technology, are we just increasing our distance to each other? Let us hope not.