Emanuele Crialese’s Nuovomondo and the Triumph of the Mediterranean Heritage

• Main Author: Simonetta Milli Konewko
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Athens Institute for Education and Research 2015-10-01
• Series: Athens Journal of Humanities & Arts
• Subjects: theories of emotions; hope; despair; migration; mediterranean; culture; film studies
• Online Access: http://www.athensjournals.gr/humanities/2015-2-4-1-Konewko.pdf

Hope, commonly perceived as a positive emotion, is defined as a means to reach desirable objectives and tο motivate oneself toward the ways to attain them. It triggers a more positive belief toward the future since it allows individuals to open up, remove their fear, and center on the larger situation. The present work focuses on images that generate hope as well as those that suppress it in order to emphasize Crialese’s perception of the New World’s culture in opposition to the Mediterranean one. Moved by this emotion, the director focuses on the story of a Sicilian family’s migration from Sicily to New York at the beginning of the 20th century. Describing their positive beliefs about their future but also those moments that generate despair and lack of understanding, the director highlights his concerns and a paradoxical perception of the New World in opposition to the values of the southern Italian culture they left behind. Through an examination of the modern American culture that infuses hope and optimism while distorting expectations and dreams, Crialese underlines the values of the Mediterranean heritage that emphasizes the affirmation of values internal to human beings and associated with fraternity and solidarity among individuals. At the same time, he expands the drama of the Sicilian family to the masses of people that in the course of the centuries have devoted their energies, expectations, and dreams in lands faraway from home.