Isola!

The island

Dialogue with a penal colony

"Half of life."

With its yellow pears

and wild roses everywhere

the shore hangs into the lake,

o gracious swans,

and drunk with kisses

you dip your heads in the sobering holy water.

Ah!

Where will I find flowers, come winter,

and where the sunshine,

and shade of the earth?

Walls stand cold and speechless,

in the wind the weathervanes creak.

Yes, he told me perillo was coming up for the shift change.

For the shift change.

All right.

You'll come of your own accord?

- Not me, my brothers wanted to come. - You'll take them around.

You'll tell them lies, "I worked here. I did all this."

No, the first time my brothers came here they said

it's a nice place, with clean air.

- That the nature's beautiful. - They're not wrong about that.

It's the people who are no good.

I don't mean anyone in particular.

If they arrest me I'll go right to another agricultural penal colony.

Giusé! If they arrest me I'll go to another agricultural penal colony.

- Giusé won't be here anymore. - I won't come here if he's not here.

How could I?

For example, someone whose name we already know

who's being punished as an accomplice.

He, for example, has already atoned in some way.

- Does he get a lesser penalty? - This conversation...

My favorite couldn't have had it.

Who?

Him.

- I don't dwell on those crimes. - Heavens!

I'll remember that. "I don't dwell on those crimes."

A small-time crook like that.

What you're saying will get you put in the high-security wing.

In the cemetery in my village

there's a statue of an angel when you go in...

Boy, is it ugly.

It must be four or five meters tall, maybe more.

Over the years it turned black.

It has this ugly face and is holding up a sword like this.

- The exorcist? - No.

As soon as you enter the cemetery it says across the...

Wait...

It says, "run away and flee as you wish, brother, for I await you here."

A sentence.

And then you go inside and there's this chapel...

There's a chapel.

Before you head to the gravestones and stuff

there's another angel.

It doesn't have a sword.

It's pretty ugly too.

And there's another sentence there. Hold on...

"You are as I once was,

I am as you will be."

The angel's a skeleton.

It's another sentence,

"you are as I was," that is, a young man of flesh and blood.

I am a skeleton, so "I am as you will be."

I won't go back there anymore with all those sentences.

That rotten place.

You, with all these sentences...

Things used to be gloomy back in the old days, but not now.

Will the boat come?

Could we have half a day?

I could meet up with the inmates.

Yes, because I'm here with the boys giving an interview,

so, to be honest, you're bothering me at the moment.

What is it?

Okay, we'll talk soon, commissioner.

Goodbye.

You seemed like a neapolitan trying to pick my pockets.

But it's...

- Where do I keep that? - What?

I'll turn off the phone. There, I remembered.

Are you sure you didn't ruin my computer? Will it turn back on?

You've been a psychologist here for 30 years.

- 31. - 31. Oh, okay.

Yes. We've got to be exact.

What have you learned from the inmates?

I've learned not to do certain things.

What I've learned from the inmates

is to not judge people.

And that not judging people is a wonderful thing.

The inmates have taught me patience.

And the inmates have taught me to wait.

That is, they've taught me to plan, to fight to achieve something.

To apply myself to achieve something.

And that's no small thing.

That's no small thing at all.

I've found...

I've found an inmate isn't just a shell of a human being.

An inmate has a heart and a soul.

Therefore he can express himself.

If someone has done bad, they can also do good.

And that's a lot.

That is a lot.

Go on.

Good night.

Good night.

Good night.

Good night.

- Good night. - Good night.

Good night.

"Hyperion's song of destiny."

Holy spirits, you walk up there in the light,

on soft earth.

Shining god-like breezes

touch upon you gently,

as a woman's fingers play music on holy strings.

Like sleeping infants

the gods breathe without any plan

the spirit flourishes continually in them, chastely kept,

as in a small bud,

and their holy eyes look out

in still eternal clearness.

A place to rest isn't given to us

suffering humans decline and blindly fall

from one hour to the next,

like water thrown from cliff to cliff,

year after year, down into the unknown.

- Was that good? - Yes, very good.

- Do you like the verses? - Yes.

Does it mean something to you?

Yes, it talks about nature. Let's say...

More than anything else

I think it's about the emotions

the poet has when he comes into contact with nature.

Profound emotions that not all people feel.

I think that it's a gift to be able to feel these profound emotions

that nature... that nature gives you.

Yesterday you told us why you're here in prison.

- Yes. - I wanted to ask you something.

Did you know you were committing a crime? What were you thinking when you did it?

Yes...

Unfortunately, sometimes in life...

Like you said before, sometimes evil

prevails over good.

We live in a world

of technological and economic advancements

that drive us

to always want more and more.

And that is kind of the...

The vanity of man.

There's this tendency

to always want to be prosperous, to want a life of leisure,

unfortunately, sometimes in life you're never really satisfied.

You have to achieve a certain balance.

You need to find the right balance in order to be content,

but instead sometimes you just don't manage to overcome that...

... that feeling of never having enough, whether it has to do with money

or living a life of leisure, and so on.

It was probably

moments such as those that led me...

To want to try to get richer,

to want to have more money.

And so I did things that weren't right, things that were wrong.

And I got paid for it.

And maybe certain people weren't in a position to do those things.

So they turned to me to do them.

Will you let me pass now so I can get out?

Come on now, go over there.

Come on, move. Over there.

- Hey! - Enough! Out of the way.

Go on! Get down. Down!

- May I? - Yes.

You're messing with the throw-ins.

This damn ball doesn't want to go in.

It takes some real luck.

You don't have a clue.

Oh, how sweet it is!

No, no, it's their fault!

- That was you! - They get angry when they lose.

Idiot, you let it go through!

- Him and ciro. - Paolo, you misfired that one.

Come on, you shot it. Ciro didn't do it.

- You threw it in like that. - This is normal.

- It's three to one. Let's go. - It went along here and down there.

It annoys me when you pull stunts.

- Why? You didn't see it. - Mauri, I saw it. That's all I'm good at!

Oh no, that one's gone.

- Get the other one. - Great. Give it to me.

- Here. - You got another one?

It nearly went in.

How would it have been had you been jailed in the Roman empire?

If I had been jailed in the Roman empire

then things would have been different,

because back then...

You had straw in a room. You were put in chains.

You could work, in the mines.

In the quarries and in coal mines. You could do things like that.

It was different.

As far as prison is concerned, it's better now

than it was in Roman times.