Such asides come to stand in for more direct attacks on how religious codes have kept them all silent on Camillo for so long. Though the other family members don’t come across as apostates, they clearly have a more modern view of Catholicism, making sarcastic note of how metaphysical notions such as the existence of limbo have been eradicated by Vatican councils in a reminder of the mortal judgments guiding supposedly immovable divine law. For one, he and his siblings make repeated references to their mother’s intense devotion and her fear of hell, something they chuckle about now that she’s passed but which clearly informs an inherited shame over the stigma of suicide in Christian teaching.
Marco makes clear that his and his relatives’ sense of culpability stems as much from the legacy of shame and repression handed down by Catholic dogma as it does from their shared filial grief. Though no one blames Marco for neglecting his twin, it soon becomes evident that he feels an indirect responsibility for the way his success deepened Camillo’s depression. With Marco bouncing between festivals and hobnobbing with other artists, he failed to notice Camillo’s worsening mental health. Even today, the family is circumspect in discussing the matter, referring obliquely to a “veil of melancholy that never left him.” As the director starts to speak more directly about Camillo to his surviving siblings, a portrait of grief gradually emerges that contrasts with Marco’s artistic life.Īccording to the family, Marco and Camillo were creative and restless in their youth, but where Marco latched onto filmmaking and went on to international success after the release of Fists in the Pocket, Camillo struggled to find his calling. The documentary begins at a convivial 2016 family gathering where the topic of Camillo arises in peripheral conversations whispered between elderly members. Marco navigates his repressed memories and those of his relatives as they collectively unpack their loved one’s death, using the film as the catalyst for long-delayed therapy. Marco Bellocchio’s Marx Can Wait is a delicate mix of biography and autobiography, the story of the Italian filmmaker’s fraternal twin, Camillo, who died by suicide in 1968, but also of Marco and his family struggling after more than 50 years with that tragedy.