Palio Review
By David Kempler
Horse Racing, Italian Style
One of the Tribeca Film Festival's most beautiful looking documentaries is lush and thrilling, although I couldn't help but cringe at what is at the heart of it. "Palio" concerns the town of Siena, Italy, and more specifically a horse race that takes place there twice a year. On a side note, Siena definitely has the looks of a place I would like to visit someday. However, I have mixed emotions as to whether I would want to be there for the races.
The Kentucky Derby traces its history back to 1875, although it had been a race in the streets of Louisville for a little while before then. The Palio began around the year of 1400. Since then, the town of Siena goes nuts twice every summer.
The film pays a lot of attention to the races, naturally, but also to the many shenanigans that routinely go on behind the scenes. Politics and corruption - okay, that's redundant - abound. The races are less about the skills of the horses and jockeys than they are about the crookedness of it all. Director Cosima Spender not only shows us the Piazza del Campo, where the races are held, but spends most of the film letting us watch what happens before the races.
At the outset, we meet Gigi Bruschelli, who has won the race an incredible 13 times, but a retired jock has won 15. The two jocks have a rivalry despite the fact that they don't compete against each other. Bruschelli also has his protégé, Giovanni Atzeni, in the race, but that doesn't mean that Bruschelli would be happy if his protégé won. This is a very cutthroat business.
Siena is divided into 17 districts, with a horse and jockey representing each district. Only 10 districts can have a horse in any given race and if they explained why this is, I missed it. The horses are randomly assigned to the districts. Then the district hires a jockey. (Yes, it all has a bit of a "
Hunger Games" feel to it.)
In the months leading up to the race, enormous amounts of money flow into the process from politicians and other well-placed wealthy individuals. The jockeys, themselves, cut deals with and against each other right up until the moments before the race. Perhaps the most amazing part is that the race-winner and the district receive nothing monetary for their efforts. This is all about pride in one's district. Sometimes, when a losing jockey has been thought to have not tried to win, he has been attacked by crowds of his district's followers. A few have been stabbed to death.
There are other oddities that surround these races, including that if a jockey falls off the horse and his horse crosses the finish line, first, he is declared the winner. It has happened 23 times. Before the race, the police give each jockey dried ox penises so that they can whip each other during the race. That's right, not whip their horses, but the opposing jockeys.
"Palio" is great fun to watch, except for the races, themselves. While they are thrilling and the camera work and cinematography is fantastic, the races themselves are brutal, in particular to the horses. Remember that they are racing around a plaza, not on a racetrack. Horses can run into walls, and do. No mention is made of the dangers faced by the horses and nothing about what has happened to them through the years. Granted, regular thoroughbred racing is full of problems to the horses, too, but that Palio has lasted this long is a tribute to the culture surrounding it and also an indictment of it all.
Despite my problem with the morality of the treatment of the horses during the races, I can't deny that Cosima Spender has done a magnificent job of putting it all together. I look at it as a very well made and fascinating story, but how much it may or may not offend you is something only you can know.
