My Brilliant Friend 3.07: “Try Again” Review

“You’re a reactionary, aren’t you?”

The personal experiences of politics have a way of shattering peoples’ convictions about their theoretical behavior. Who they think they are. What they think of their worldview. How they see themselves within the constructs of a society that rests upon a foundation of oppression for stability. But then something happens–an instance small, vast, or somewhere in between–and people react.

That we like to think of ourselves as better versions of who we are is not a mark of judgment. It’s a natural expression of existence and one that changes throughout our lives, sometimes so quickly that it leaves us in a maelstrom of upheaval. Sometimes it happens so slowly that it feels like our own mind is tricking us, sabotaging our sense of awareness and desire alike.

That we react is normal. How we react is important. How we respond to our reaction and process it is important. How we incorporate that self-reflection into our being is important.

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I don’t blame Pietro (Matteo Cecchi) for his anger that a student pointed a gun at him in the latest episode of My Brilliant Friend. However, he wants the student to be punished for this act, which presents a complicated question for how he views himself, his theoretical political beliefs, and where he stands in a country embroiled in revolutionary fervor. He still believes himself to be a revolutionary, but he can’t climb out of the shadow of his wealthy family. This is also a shadow of himself as an institutional figure at a time when the very existence of institutions is being questioned. In order to be a revolutionary, you have to have self-awareness. And Pietro has none of that. 

“You can only act on what happened,” Elena (Margherita Mazzucco) says sharply when Pietro wails about what would have happened if his student had actually shot him. That Elena is indifferent about the near-shooting says a lot about the state of their marriage, but she’s also right in that he can only respond to the real, not the theoretical. And, in his response, he’s not who he thought himself to be. That, in some respect, rankles him to his very core.

My Brilliant Friend has always been about the intersection of the personal and the political. The politics of who gets access to education and who doesn’t. The politics of who becomes a figure of authority and who doesn’t. The politics of wanting a better life than the one you had and how you achieve it. But My Brilliant Friend foregrounds its characters and the resultant thematic exploration of the narrative’s politics therefore feels organic and grounded. We experience politics in personal experiences far more than in theory and these struggles feel relatable.

These struggles are not just internal, however. The series doesn’t shy away from the explicit violence that its characters encounter at the hands of fascism. As an ideology, fascism empowers an authoritarian state and demands that you become a vessel for that state.  Fascism demands that you surrender your independence, your sense of self and replace it with strict adherence and obedience to the state. Fascism requires the loss of the body. Seeing the scenes of fascists viciously attacking people in the streets and threatening women protesting for their bodily autonomy in the squares of 1970s’ Italy should feel like the vestige of a time bygone, leaving a history in its wake. Instead it feels like a mirror with instructions.

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Best Quotes:

– “Maybe there’s something wrong with men’s desire to educate us.”

– “I hate intelligent men who tell me how I should be.”

– “Pietro can barely figure out his own manhood, let alone impose a vision of womanhood on you.”

– “Let’s end it with men.”

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– “Despite all our efforts, the new flesh did what the old had done.”

– “Maturity consisted in accepting the turn existence had taken without getting too upset by it.”

– “I was Mrs. Airota, a woman saddened by inaction, and who, in any case, in order to combat despondency had in secret begun studying the invention of women by men.”

– “Where is the pleasure of women centered?”

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– “A community that smothers the intellectual energies of women with housework and child-rearing is its own worst enemy.”

– “If we have passion, nothing can stop us”

– “I just wrote, with great commitment.”

– “You attributed to her abilities that were yours.”

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