“Nona”, by Massimo Volta. A.K.A ” An almost perfect Italian Dollar Baby”
I have some special feelings about this short movie, a lot of them actually.
First of all I had the permission to screen this Dollar Baby at the first edition of my film fest here in Brazil. And every movie that I screen in here I get attached to it because I spend hours and hours working in it to translate into Portuguese and later to add subs to it. So, I watched Dollar Baby many times once it got selected.
“Nona“, an Italian Dollar Baby directed by Massimo Volta, was the first Dollar Baby that I screened here in Brazil (besides my own in private screenings). I choosed this short movie to open the first edition of my Dollar Baby Film Fest because it is a fucking awesome short movie. It is beautiful!!!! And one of the main reasons is that its cinematography is the most beautiful cinematography I have ever seen in a Dollar Baby!
The cinematography of “Nona” (also work of the director Massimo Volta) is beautiful in a way it is hard to find in independent movies. Having a low budget sometimes has its costs, sometimes you have a great and creative cinematographer, but your budget doesn’t allow you to have the camera you would like to have. And because of that some young filmmakers do not have good cinematography in their first movies. But young and very creative filmmakers always find a way to make it, and I can assure you that Massimo Volta found a way to have beautiful cinematography with his Dollar Baby and using a Canon 5D Mark III.
For those of you that don’t understand cameras let me explain: Canon 5D is a photo camera. And, yes, it also makes videos in HD,.Most young filmmakers used to shoot their first movies using cameras like that, it was cheap. But not every cinematographer could get the quality of image that Massimo Volta got from it using only imagination and some techniques. I will not try to explain the techniques in here, it would make this a boring review, but you can check out Volta’s interview here in SKSM to understand a little more and later if you get interested you can make your own research.
For me, as a viewer, the beauty of this cinematography is the color printed in every single frame in a way that the image looks so real, even in HD. As a filmmaker myself I got amazed by the locations, the scenarios and the extras they have in this movie. And once I read Volta’s interview and understood how much they spent to make the movie and how they got the extras at the bar scene, and also the 5D thing… Man, I started to respect and admire Volta’s movie even more after I read his interview becauseI can relate with the difficulties he had and also the solutions he found.
I also had a cinematographer that used 5D and the same technique in a short movie of mine. Massimo Volta uses the therme “guerrilla style” at the interview and I became even more a fan of his work after he said that, because my first movies were also independent movies filmed in guerrilla style, we use this therme here in Brazil. It means shooting a movie like you were in a warzone, with almost no resources and having to be creative to get what you want. Is there a more honest way to define how it is to shoot a low budget movie? Thank you Massimo Volta.
Another thing that I love about this short movie is its screenplay, the way Volta adapted the original story. He was 90% faithful, but also allowed himself to add new things that still make sense, the new parts helped to make the movie a real fun movie to watch. Some changes were needed to a low budget movie, but at the same time still make sense. For instance, the scene with Ace Merril has a different scenario, but it is as good as King’s version of the original story, because it still tells the same thing and maybe (for some viewers) tells it in a better way….
The new killings too, it makes sense and makes the movie fun to watch, makes it dynamic. One of my favourite new things in the movie was the prison scene where we can hear King himself giving an interview on some radio or a TV night show. It is so fun, Volta had King himself as a cameo in the movie if you think about it.
A change from the original story that was also welcome is the movie’s ending: King let an open final, where the readers don’t know if Nona was real or if she was a ghost, a demon or a hallucination from the main character’s head. And it is cool this way (very cool, I love this kind of ending), but Volta choosed to change that, he chooses to tell us a little bit more of what happens when King stopped to write that story. And it is fun, real fun.
Another great aspect of this Dollar Baby is its locations and scenarios, man… the woods, the road, they look like America and they were shooted in Italy. The bar too and the jail, it looks like America, it smells like America in such a clever way… but the cemetery was the best location ever!!!! I remember how amazed the audience became when they saw that cemetery for the first time at this first screening, I looked at a friend of mine (also a filmmaker) and asked him “can you believe it is a low budget movie?”. He couldn’t. The cemetery is huge and so beautiful, I wish I could shoot something in there.
The sound design and sound mixing are also something to aplaude at this Dollar Baby. Most of the times I watched I used my head phone or air dots, and it was an amazing experience. We can hear so many details that give us an immersive experience that not every young filmmaker has in their first movies. We can hear bugs, far away trains, the rock under the actor’s shoes… There are so many details to hear that only with an air dot or in a real movie theater you can hear it. Volta, thank you again, grazie. I am applauding you, ain’t you hearing? Well, if I had your sound guys I bet you would.
Easter eggs!!! I know you guys love them the same as I do, but I have to confess that sometimes I am a little bit slow to get them. But one that I got in this Dollar Baby was obviously Randall Flagg. And it is cool not only because Volta signs to us with such a beloved character in King’s universe but also makes me wonder: it makes sense! Maybe in another universe that kid (we never got the chance to know his real name) is Randall!!! If you ever read King’s poem “The Dark Man” you understand what I am saying, that kid could become Randall Flagg in some alternative universe.If you have never read this poem, do yourself a favor and read it! It is cool and the version I have here in Portuguese is illustrated by Glenn Chadborne and it is so beautiful!!
But let’s get back to Massimo Volta’s Dollar Baby. I consider this not only one of my favourite Dollar Babies, but I also consider this an almost perfect Dollar Baby for all the reasons I wrote in this review. The only thing that makes me not consider a perfect Dollar Baby is a small and solly thing, but one thing that I would love if it was different: it would be so cool if the short movie was spoken in Italian. It is in english, all the actors speak english in this movie and they do pretend that they are in America and that is something that bothers me a little. Not the American thing, but of course that if they were speaking in Italian they should change that, but I think that if this movie was spoken in Italian it would have so much more soul and personality. After I read Volta’s interview I understood why he chose to have the movie in english and I do respect this choice, but man…. Here in Brazil we are used to having movies with subs, we don’t mind reading them. Of course, it is better when you don’t have to read and I do speak Italian, but once I started with the Dollar Baby film fest I noticed that the same way I love Dollar Babies spoken in different languages, the audience loves it too. I screened movies in Greek, Hebraic, Spanish, Polish, Russian and also one Italian. Some day I intend to screen the Chinese version of “All That You Love Will Be Carried Away”. This diversity of languages and countries adapting Stephen King’s stories is one of the things I love most about Dollar Babies. So, yeah, “Nona” would be so much better if it was in italian, it would be a perfect Dollar Baby.
The Dollar Baby’s grade? We from SKSM give the short movie 5 fingers from the dead guy’s hand. And I would give it more, but the dead is kind of clumsy, he is always losing his other fingers.
I hope you guys liked this review, I know I liked to share these thoughts with you guys. Before I go, one tip: if you search on the Internet I believe you might have the opportunity to watch this Dollar Baby. I am saying this because 3 years ago, when I was searching for Dollar Babies to screen I found an official website of “Nona” where they would send you a download link to it if you were interested. That is how I got to watch this movie the first time. But before I started to write this review I could not find the website anymore. So I don’t know if they took it from the web or maybe this time I did not search as well as I did 3 years ago. If I were you, I would search harder 😉
See you guys next time.
Leonardo Granado.
