Everything Calls For Salvation Review: Presented As A Real Journey, That Of Daniel In Search Of Himself And His Freedom
Cast: Federico Cesari, Andrea Pennacchi, Vincenzo Crea, Lorenzo Renzi, Vincenzo Nemolato, Alessandro Pacioni
Creator: Francesco Bruni, Daniele Mencarelli, Daniela Gambaro, Francesco Cenni
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Everything Calls for Salvation Coming to Netflix on 14 October, right in the week of safeguarding mental health, the TV series is based on the autobiographical novel by Daniele Mencarelli, Premio Strega Giovani 2020, and is a one-week journey within a ward. where people who have nothing in common find themselves sharing a dormitory, where they consume anguish, and paranoia but also hopes. Seven days is not easy where some stay. Some go. Some remain in constant wait or are parked from one side to the other because “it’s nobody’s problem”. Invisible patients who, like ghosts, haunt a ward somewhat left to themselves and where the prejudices, stereotypes and judgmental sense of those who come from outside are always alert, always violent, Unable to listen, Unable to understand.
In the television representation, we are finally starting to talk more and more about mental health. That abstract “thing” that does not exist for someone, is the fruit of imagination, of weak people, unable to face life. That life which, after all, is hard for everyone. And, if you’re sick, it’s your fault, yours alone. The disease is only in your head, it doesn’t exist. In reality, this is what Daniele thought for a long time, finding himself even more upset and troubled when he woke up in a psychiatric ward to undergo the TSO (Compulsory Health Treatment) following a psychotic crisis where he attacked his father and mother. And this is how we begin the review of Everything Calls For Salvation, of which we have seen the first two episodes.
Everything Calls For Salvation Review: The Story
The plot of Tutto Chiede Salvezza follows the story of Daniele Cenni (Federico Cesari), a twenty-year-old who takes his first steps in the real estate market more as a transition job than as a real aspiration for the future. Daniele seems to have no hobbies, passions, or specific desires. Everything just seems too much to him. Any emotion seems too much to him. Life seems too much to him. Yet these are thoughts that Daniele constantly keeps to himself, until an event leads him to completely collapse, succumbing to a psychotic crisis and awakening, confused and without memory about the events of the previous night, in the psychiatric ward of a hospital with friends. of five unlikely characters. Each with the story of him. Each with his way of seeing the world.
Daniele’s reaction is one of rejection and fear, unable to accept the place, the roommates, what he has done and the obligation to have to stay there for seven days. Seven interminable days. What does he have to do with those people? He is not crazy. Why don’t his parents get him out of there? Why are his brother and sister so cold toward him? Why don’t his friends come looking for him? Denial is the first elaboration process carried out by our mind towards something that it does not want to accept but which, after all, is present in us. A denial that in Daniele becomes more ferocious in the first hours, then calmer, then returns with even more force. He doesn’t understand that forced sharing. He does not understand that “to make all the grass a bundle”.
Exactly as society has taught him, he feels superior, he has nothing in common with crazy people. He is not crazy! But what does it mean to be crazy? And most importantly, can mental health come down to just being crazy or not being crazy? Daniele’s path starts exactly from here, but this which initially looks like a real prison, an unjust punishment that will drive him crazy, will turn into a path of acceptance, liberation and healing. The first step? It is knowing that you need to ask for help and not being afraid to do so.
Everything Calls For Salvation Review and analysis
Going into the detail of this review of the first two episodes of Everything Calls For Salvation, we are faced with a rather simple series. Seven days for seven episodes. Almost a single environment, the claustrophobic one of the wards. Only one room to sleep and eat. One where you can recreate yourself and watch some television with a cigarette granted every three hours. A place where privacy does not exist and, as we said before, the characters move a bit like wandering souls. Some never leave their bed, some seek approval from others and there are those, like Daniele, who continue to look around lost, confused and on the defensive. A defensive with more aggressive nuances, especially about the relationship with other patients. Undoubtedly, Everything Calls For Salvation even if starting from the character of Daniele, is a TV series with a more choral breath and based mostly on its performers.
Real and sincere emotions. The TV series in the first two episodes give us first contact with this world. Often using even redundant situations, to amplify that sense of frustration and exasperation that hovers over Daniele. Certainly not an easy role for Federico Cesari, indeed decidedly visceral and emotionally trying. Daniel would like to be someone else in order not to be himself and for over twenty years of his life he never admitted it, he never spoke, always for fear of not being understood, of being judged, dismissed, or considered. crazy. Yet, in this case, Daniele hits rock bottom, pushing himself beyond his limits before understanding the essential need to ask for help. Among other things, with an awareness that is certainly not immediate and that, certainly, we will see growth over the course of the TV series.
Cesari is very skilled in giving us this type of emotion that is not very easy to handle, indeed. He manages to enter a character, carrying the shadow of a double responsibility: not only that of the risk of the stereotype linked to mental health but also that of interpreting the author on which this story is based and who, as the protagonist of the series, that experience felt on his skin. Federico Cesari’s Daniele uses arrogance and anger to escape his path. The distances in order not to face reality, often pouring out that part of himself that he does not tolerate towards others, and then always taking a step back, apologizing, feeling embittered, lost and more than ever in need of a friendly face.
And in that department of friendly faces there are many more than he can imagine; like the exuberant Gianluca di Vincenzo Crea, poised between two worlds, friendly with everything and everyone, in search of his perfect fairy tale and acting as a “magical element” in the lives of others, even if his attachment morbid, annoying in the first place for others, is nothing more than its defense mechanism against a world that has eaten it for too long and spits it out. Or even the teacher Mario (Andrea Pennacchi), a real mystery who tries to be a mentor, mediating with his experience in the group; or the gentle giant Giorgio (Lorenzo Renzi) or the unpredictable Madonnina (Vincenzo Nemolato). We have not yet had the opportunity to discover these characters fully, for now only related to Daniele and are placed according to his dynamics, however, create a pleasant exchange and dynamism between them, but it is sure that they will find more space within the next episodes.
Even though we are only at the beginning of this journey and the premises carried out by Everything Calls For Salvation seem more than satisfactory to us, especially related to the type of story told and represented, with a language and a series of situations as close as possible to reality, the on-screen rendering is not 100% convincing. It is difficult to throw down the “mother Rai” legacy that we have been carrying around for too long and that, occasionally, continues to peep out even in the staging of products linked to the serial streaming of large platforms. Of course, we do not have that annoying glossy effect typical of Rai fiction, yet there is still something mechanical, not very smooth in the images that alternate on the screen.
As for the first episodes, the direction appears uninspired, without that artistic flicker that allows the series to be exalted also for the images and not only for the (fundamental) content. If the series were in prime time on Rai 1 or streaming on Netflix, it wouldn’t make who knows what difference. Is this a problem? Sni. Or rather, it is when you want to broaden your audience of viewers towards a TV series that tells the story of many invisible people, or people who feel like they are, and you do it with a visual language that, instead, pushes you away. that slice of the public.
Everything Calls For Salvation Review: The Last Words
In its prologue, Everything Calls For Salvation is presented as a real journey, that of Daniel in search of himself and his freedom. A path that arises from denial and comes to the awareness of the disorder, of the need to ask for help and make the stigma, stereotype, and invisibility towards mental health decay. An interesting beginning, perhaps not perfect and with some slips in a direction more fictional, but which could pave the way also in Italy for the exploration of more real and current stories. We hope that the series can continue to grow, not only in the development of Daniele and his companions and from an emotional point of view, but also a scenic point of view. More transported. Even more sincere. Closer to an audiovisual language that is less aware of old television legacies.
