Abstract

In 'Stanno tutti bene', his follow-up to 'Cinema Paradiso', Tornatore uses the road movie genre to outline the progressive objectification of the individual and the commodification of society that constitute Italy's socio-economic reality at the end of the 20th century. Through the journey of Matteo Scuro, a retired Sicilian civil servant, across the Italian mainland to visit his sons and daughters, the film uses a range of emotional and intellectual strategies to represent the excesses of postmodern society. Evoking Baudrillard's dystopic vision of a society of images, the film traces the genesis of these pernicious social, cultural, and economic values back to the materialist ideals espoused by bourgeois individuals like Matteo, a value system with which his offspring – now absorbed by the market forces of Italy’s late-capitalist society – were inculcated from birth.