Sightlines · reception
How The Hand of God was received
2021 · Paolo Sorrentino · The Hand of God on Sightlines
The arc
Premiered at Venice 2021 to the warmest reviews of Sorrentino's career — the Grand Jury Prize, then an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature — with even his skeptics conceding the stripped-back memoir mode suited him; a few years on it's widely treated as the emotional key to his whole filmography.
What’s debated
The eternal Sorrentino split — is he a genuine heir to Fellini or a gorgeous imitator? — gets rerun in every comments section, with this film held up by both camps: proof he has a heart, or proof he's best when he stops showing off.
Its footprint
The title alone plugs it into one of sport's most famous moments — Maradona's 1986 'Hand of God' goal — and the film landed barely a year after Maradona's death, making it double as a global act of mourning for Naples' secular saint.
Where it stands
A Letterboxd favorite in the personal-memoir coming-of-age lane, and the standard recommendation for 'start here if The Great Beauty annoyed you.'
Did you know? When Sorrentino won the Oscar for The Great Beauty in 2014, he thanked Diego Maradona from the stage as one of his inspirations — seven years before he finally made the film about what Maradona meant to him.
Named by the director
- Federico Fellini — Sorrentino has long named Fellini his idol and, in interviews for this film — where Fellini hovers as an off-screen presence — talked openly about working under his shadow while trying not to imitate him.
- Antonio Capuano — Sorrentino has publicly credited the Neapolitan director as his real-life mentor who pushed him into cinema, and put him in the film under his own name.