honor of the traitor

In an aggregate span of 143 minutes, half of Tommaso Buscetta’s (Pierfrancesco Favino) family is decimated in 1980s Palermo and so begins a feud of honor, family, and capital in the kingdom of Sicilian Mafia, known affectionately by its members as Cosa Nostra (“our thing”). Set in the pulsating heart of international heroin trade, Marco Bellocchio’s The Traitor is a cinematic rendition of one of the first high-ranking mafia bosses turned pentito (“informant”). Forcefully implicated in the bloody Second Mafia War (1981–1983), Buscetta awakened to his blind loyalty to the Cosa Nostra and, in an act of vengeance that proved pivotal to the success of Italy’s historical anti-mafia Maxi Trials (1986–1992), he illuminated the dank underworld of mafiosi.

Buscetta was a figure of silent ferocity and ultimate loyalty. A made man who pledged allegiance at age 17 to the Palermo-based Porta Nuova faction of Cosa Nostra, Buscetta was a man whose criminal successes placed him in the high esteem of a boss, well beyond that of the simple soldier he often claimed he was. The Traitor opens with wealth and celebration, descending a balcony overlooking the mafia empire, down an adorned cerulean staircase, and into illicit extravagance. Among the festivities are Buscetta, fellow Porta Nuova members, and the Corleone family led by the heavy-handed Totò Riina (Nicola Calì). The two factions make courteous trade arrangements but tensions underlie the joyous gathering that is memorialized in a regal family portrait, marking the final moments of short-lived peace.

A riot against class dynamics within Cosa Nostra, the Second Mafia War is instigated by Riina’s Corleonesi, which, hailing from Sicilian rurality, were long-regarded by Palermo city factions as the peasants. Buscetta flees to Brazil in 1980 with his third wife as Palermo mafiosi, friends and family, women and children, are systematically executed. Despite losses, Buscetta continues dealing for Cosa Nostra until his loyalty truly expires when two of his sons disappear in 1982. Arrested in São Paulo in 1983, Buscetta fully recognizes his disillusionment as authorities dangle his wife from a plane, attempting to break his oath of silence. For a slow eternity, husband and wife watch each other; the former scorning his submission even at the brink of losing what family remains, the latter certain she would be his sacrifice. When faction becomes a kind of family, who does Buscetta choose?

Tortured and grief-stricken, Buscetta overdoses on his extradition to Italy in 1984 only to be resurrected to the realization that escape never was an option, for it was his blood that was hunted and his family’s that was spilled. Recollecting himself as a mafioso man of honor, Buscetta seeks redemption and vengeance from higher ground, requesting the attention of anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone (Fausto Russo Alesi) and begins life as a pentito. Buscetta chose his wife; he chose loyalty to justice and honor in righteousness but he is no hero. Cosa Nostra forced Buscetta’s hand when it betrayed old traditions under Riina’s totalitarian regime. Family, duty, honesty, and silence are sacred values and there are taboos even among forbidden professions, for honor comes with respecting standards. But, when each mafioso is really only a soldier to duty, the only things mafiosi retain from being men are fear and loyalty.

The collective unit of mafia-dom becomes tangible for the first time in the Maxi Trials sequences. Filmed in the original octagonal bunker-courthouse, The Traitor recreates the zoo of 475 indicted Mafiosi crying innocence, stapling their mouths shut, feigning madness, and slandering pentiti in a grotesque “Cell Block Tango”. These men are not glamorous or glorious and Buscetta forever sought a higher identity, masking his Sicilian accent, exuding worldliness, diminishing his authority, never admitting to murder, and always demonstrating grace. When Cosa Nostra strayed and disappointed, Buscetta placed loyalty in Judge Falcone and the judicial system that would punish a corrupted notion of honor. Ultimately, with his testimony and that of an ally who followed his example, history was made with over 300 mafia convictions.

Buscetta’s motive to inform may have been for vengeance but he was no traitor to Cosa Nostra, at least not the Cosa Nostra he pledged to. Murder once required justification as a last resort; women and children were untouchable; and there was structure that offered a sense of family, comradery, and humanity. Buscetta was loyal to these old values that were once honorable but lost in the war and, in daring to challenge a family that neither forgives nor forgets, he was granted ultimate peace and redemption.



Featured in Cinema Skyline: Volume V.