For a story like notorious traitor Tommaso Buscetta’s, a director as seasoned as Marco Bellocchio makes sense for Il Traditore. Even if he is a northerner from the Emilia-Romagna region. And this is a tale that doesn’t get much farther south, set in the Sicily of the 80s, when the Cosa Nostra had turned into a juggernaut empire with as much power over Italy as the ancient Romans had. It was a power built on the back of drug smuggling, primarily heroin (the reaches of which extended all the way to New York, resulting in the Pizza Connection Trial, offering the longest-lasting court proceedings in U.S. history. Incidentally, Buscetta testified there as well).
However, at the outset of Cosa Nostra’s birth in the nineteenth century, being a “man of honor” meant something entirely different. Something that Buscetta still held onto even as he thrived in the trade of moving product, eventually getting him into enough trouble to flee to Rio, Brazil, where his crimes caught up with him and he was extradited. Of course, it wasn’t his first time in Brazil, having set up shop in that country before and even undergoing plastic and vocal cord surgery to start a life of crime there. One that didn’t last very long before he was extradited back to Italy the first time in 1972. Upon release in 1980, he instantly fled once more to Brazil so as to avoid the Second Mafia War being puppeteered by the ruthless Toto Riina. His freedom only lasted three years before he was again arrested and reshipped to Italy, prompting the quip, “I’ve seen all of Italy. Or at least all of its prisons.” This time around, his determination not to return to the homeland prompted him to attempt suicide by overdosing on barbiturates before returning, where, more than the government’s law, he feared that of the Cosa Nostra’s.
Losing his chance at a more literal get out of jail free card, Tommaso decided it was time to sing like a canary, now at this point completely disillusioned with the Cosa Nostra after the “disappearance” of his two sons, Benedetto and Antonio, who we see at the beginning of the film during a tense celebration of Santa Rosalia, the patron saint of Palermo.
Played with humor and charm by Pierfrancesco Favino in Il Traditore, the incredible whirlwind of his life after turning against the mafia is told with the lyrical and slightly sardonic tone that only Italians can lend a story filled with such violent tragedy at every turn. As the first pentito of his kind, much of what the world outside of Cosa Nostra came to understand about its inner workings was a direct result of Tommaso’s forty-five day long interviews with anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone (Fausto Russo Alesi). Indeed, the rapport between the two onscreen is deftly played out with the riveting unraveling of how Tommaso came to find himself being the first traitor of his magnitude. His disgust with the increasing bloodshed and the lack of respect for any honorable code of conduct (i.e. not killing children) pushing him to his final breaking point. Of course, he was also at a certain point of legal conviction where he really had nothing left to lose.
His illustrious penchant for womanizing is one of the comedic aspects used to temper scenes filled with greater dramatic tension. In this way, co-writers Marco Bellocchio, Valia Santella Ludovica Rampoldi, Francesco Piccolo and Francesco La Licata strike the perfect balance between the tragedia e commedia della vita. One scene in particular finds him so eager to have sex with a woman during a conjugal visit, that when he notices an old man has died in the bed nearby, he simply covers him up with the sheet and goes back to his own bed to fuck. Such is the sexual appetite of an Italian. Nay, a Sicilian. And, speaking of that distinction, there is also Salvatore “Totuccio” Contorno, played by Luigi Lo Cascio. After following Tommaso’s example in turning informant, Totuccio encounters many instances in the high courts of Italy when he’s being told he’s not speaking Italian. Instead, his own fast-talking Sicilian dialect. When both Tommaso and Totuccio reunite in the U.S. while under the witness protection program, Tommaso asks, “You still haven’t learned English after all these years?” “English? I never learned Italian. I talk with my hands,” he retorts.
In many respects, the Sicilians being looked down upon by “real” Italians is what fueled their need to gain control. To say, “Look what we can do–you need us.” And the Italians needed them as witnesses, to boot. It was arguably what saved the country from sinking into the furthest depths of decay–and many would still argue that part of why Italy is in the state it’s currently in is because of the lasting effects of what Cosa Nostra did. Rising from the ashes in its place were men like Silvio Belusconi, all operating “on the level” this time. But still owning a monopoly on the country.
On that note, as Tommaso continued to testify, the one thing he didn’t feel Italy was ready for was knowing just how deeply in bed the country’s politicians were with the mafia. He saved that information for after Riina ordered the murder of both Falcone and another anti-mafia judge, Paolo Borsellino, in car bombings. A haunting slow motion scene followed by images of Cosa Nostra members celebrating by popping bottles and spitting at images of the judges on TV. It was after this that Tommaso really let loose, naming as one example of a magistrate’s affiliation with Cosa Nostra, Giulio Andreotti. It’s at this point in the narrative that Andreotti’s defense attorney, Franco Coppi (Alberto Storti), uses everything about Tommaso’s character against him, from his inconsistencies in anecdotes told and how he makes his money to his philandering nature. All of it amounting to the audience wondering if his testimony will be used to further undermine the mafia’s authority or not.
As far as reiterating the notion that the truth is stranger than fiction, the life of Tommaso Buscetta can serve as no better example, played out in an endless string of absurd scenes ranging from his wife being held out of a helicopter while Tommaso is forced to watch her death being risked as a means to get him to confess to an eerie Santa Claus at a restaurant in New Hampshire who starts singing in Italian (and we all know nobody in New Hampshire speaks Italian), “Sono un siciliano vero,” goading Tommaso on for his traitorous ways. Yet despite all the looming threats and the perpetual sense of paranoia (as well as a sense of having lost the greatest source of excitement and pleasure in his life), Tommaso lived longer than most of those he knew back in Sicily. Almost single-handedly being responsible for taking down one of the most powerful entities in modern history. Because, ultimately, a betrayal against an Italian–Sicilian or otherwise–is something that cannot be forgotten or overlooked. Vengeance must be claimed. Or at least the lifelong holding of a grudge.
