"Like Wiseman, Rosi has long eschewed voice-over narration, expository montages, direct-to-camera interviews, and other conventional formal strategies. This approach is frequently mistaken for a pose of journalistic neutrality or, worse, godlike omniscience, but it produces something livelier and far more human-an impassioned hyper-attentiveness."
"In "Pompei: Below the Clouds," which Rosi shot in black-and-white, with extraordinarily beautiful results, the camera moves on occasion, though only when it's stationed on a vessel that is itself in motion-in this case, the Circumvesuviana, a network of trains running out of Naples and around Mt. Vesuvius."
Gianfranco Rosi's "Pompei: Below the Clouds" demonstrates documentary filmmaking techniques comparable to Frederick Wiseman's approach, eschewing voice-over narration, interviews, and expository montages in favor of observational rigor. Rosi serves as his own cinematographer, creating black-and-white imagery of striking beauty. The film uses the Circumvesuviana train network running around Mount Vesuvius as both a literal and narrative framework, connecting various strands of observation. Through careful editing by Fabrizio Federico, the film establishes a subtle, musical rhythm that guides viewers through interconnected scenes of Pompeian artifacts and contemporary life, creating an impassioned hyper-attentiveness to place and environmental transformation.
Read at The New Yorker
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