The word “violence” is often narrowly defined in the Western lexicon. The word has explicit connotations associated with bodily actions and weapons, but is less frequently associated with words or the consequences of policies. The word has explicit connotations associated with bodily actions and weapons, but is less frequently associated social hierarchies and stratification. The word has explicit connotations associated with bodily actions and weapons, but is less frequently associated bigotry and oppression.

Violence, much like political ideology, isn’t always experienced in broadly defined phenomena. It is one thing to think of violence and political ideology in the abstract and the theoretical. It is a different thing to experience violence and the circumstances that may or may not support the political ideology with which one is aligned. It is a different matter to act upon those experiences and these actions often reveal who we are.

In episode five of My Brilliant Friend, Elena (Margherita Mazzucco) thinks of herself as being more forward-thinking than she really is. Pietro (Matteo Cecchi) thinks of himself as an enlightened intellectual when, at his heart, he’s simply a beneficiary of nepotism who strikes his wife, a coarse act of brutality he associates with the lower classes. Nadia (Giorgia Gargano) finds herself to be a revolutionary who appreciates the bluntness of truth telling, but she bristles upon receiving the truth herself. Pasquale (Eduardo Scarpetta) fights against systems that crush community through brutality, but he has formed into a man who’s becoming incapable of seeing beyond his own self, of love and without love, and truly seeing what is a revolution. These characters are more than that, of course, but their contradictions provide one of the series’ best episodes with a genuine heft and discomfort about the space the characters inhabit.

Violence of every shade is etched throughout this masterpiece of an episode. From the opening explosions that light the Solara’s supermarket on fire, to the men whose very presence near a rally for the Women’s Liberation Movement feels like a thinly veiled threat, My Brilliant Friend brilliantly understands the different shades that violence takes. But violence in the abstract can be difficult to emotionally process without understanding how it’s impacted the personal. It is unsurprising that the best show on television has achieved this feat by slowly layering the characters at its beating heart.

When Elena calls Lila (Gaia Girace) about the fascist Gino’s (Riccardo Palmieri) murder, Lila responds with the same tone of voice one might use when describing their afternoon tea. Lila doesn’t know if Pasquale is truly responsible for Gino’s murder or not, but if he was, she supports him and in that support she expresses the differences in her and Elena’s experiences. Elena lives in a posher area filled with the residences of doctors, lawyers, and professors. Lila lives in they neighbourhood Elena has left behind, a neighbourhood where fascist bloodshed is a fact of life. As far as Lila is concerned, there’s one less fascist threatening her life and the life of her family. 

It’s the same experience that is quietly revealed when Elena asks if Carmela (Francesca Pezzella) had called the police for help. You can almost hear the combination of laughter, fear, and disbelief in Carmela’s voice when she thinks about the police and says “The police? They’re more fascist than the fascists.”

Pasquale picks up on this thread when he and Nadia show up at Elena’s house. This sequence is so quietly uncomfortable that you could effortlessly, slowly melt into your couch. They’re both unforgivably nasty to Elena and certainly Nadia has less of a ground to stand on when it comes to class warfare. Elena quietly calls Nadia out for having the wealth and privilege to avoid tough choices, but she might as well have yelled it into her plate of pasta. 

Pasquale is unwilling to see Elena as a person, which is nothing new for a man who has long ago ceased to see anyone as anything but a vessel for his own projections and insecurities. But his cruelties, and Nadia’s cruelties, cut in Elena something deep. They slice a gnawing sense that has been bursting within her with a sound that threatens to grow louder and louder until it erupts, the feeling that she, Elena, is lost. The façade of her life has taken over her completely. Ahe feels the sharp insight of the Lenù that Pasquale can no longer find. She realizes that she can’t find that Lenù, either. She has been subsumed by a life that has slowly sucked the life out of her and left behind a wandering ghost in its place. Pietro can’t help her find that Lenù–he’s too much of a part of the problem to ever be that helpful–nor can her family. She doesn’t even know if Lila can. And trusting yourself to find the version of yourself that you know, the version that has been relegated to the trembling past, is a task even the strongest find formidable.

Notes:

– We all know someone like Nadia, a person who claims to be super receptive to blunt honesty but hates it when they receive said blunt honesty.
– “I’ll go and help Elena.” Well, that’s a first!

Best Quotes: 

– “I am mine and I have the power.”
– “Tremble in fear, the witches are here” is a banging protest slogan and we should bring it back.
– “The police? They’re more fascist than the fascists.”
– “Feel how rough my hands are, Professor. If these hands weren’t like this, not even a chair could exist. A car, a building. Not even you.”
– “If we workers suddenly stopped working, everything would stop.”
– “The fascists want to kill everyone who doesn’t think like them.”
– “I’ll wait for you for eternity.” / “Then wait!”