Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
The story of Edgardo Mortara, a young Jewish boy living in Bologna, Italy, who in 1858, after being secretly baptized, was forcibly taken from his family to be raised as a Christian. His parents’ struggle to free their son became part of a larger political battle that pitted the papacy against forces of democracy and Italian unification.
Marco Bellocchio's Kidnapped (Rapito) is a singular, provocative historical drama tackling the Mortara affair with unflinching moral clarity. The plot is genuinely compelling — a true story with immense dramatic and political stakes, threading personal tragedy against the collapse of papal temporal power, earning a top mark. Novelty is high: Bellocchio's distinctive authorial voice, his anti-clerical fury rendered with operatic restraint, and the film's refusal to sentimentalize make it feel unlike any other period drama — it is unmistakably his film. Acting is solid across the board, with Paolo Pierobon's Pius IX being particularly unsettling, though no single performance reaches transcendent heights. Cinematography is handsome and controlled, with strong period atmosphere, but does not push into truly exceptional visual territory. The ending, while historically accurate and thematically coherent, lands with a somewhat cold, elliptical quality that is deliberately alienating — purposeful, but not fully satisfying as dramatic resolution, keeping it at above average rather than exceptional.