A proposito di Marta

“What books do you read? What movies have you seen? What music do you listen to? What items do you buy, and which do you feel you cannot do without? What do you eat, and what relationship do you have with medicine, with science? What clothes do you wear? What about politics? Do you believe in God? Are you satisfied with the world as it is, or would you like to change it? And do you have faith that it can be changed?” A father born in the 1950s storms his 25-year-old daughter with pressing, sometimes intrusive questions, but always driven by an irrepressible desire to learn about her interests, her life choices, her sorrows and hopes, and, through her, those of the generation of so-called “millennials,” from whom he feels he is divided by a psychological and cultural chasm. The answers he receives leave him doubtful, sometimes incredulous, recalcitrant and even angry, but they do not extinguish his desire to understand how the world of now is going, what direction it has taken, what language it speaks with, what images it is moved by. And so, to get a clearer idea, he finds himself stealing scraps of conversation, digging up memories, spying on slang, gestures and tastes, scrutinizing behaviors and collective rituals (his daughter in the company of friends) that often preclude any kind of dialogue. In the end, he will discover that the many drastic differences (the complete abandonment of newspapers, the sacredness of “nature” as opposed to science and technology, the different value placed on medicine, the preference given to herbal medicine over pharmacy, the central role assumed by the quality of food and body care the cult of vintage), as well as unsuspected affinities (the love of books, still intact despite certain statistics, or the passion for music, cinema and museums, albeit virtual), describe a reality in which everything changes at a breakneck speed. Yet something remains, even if we do not always know how to recognize it fully. In his witty and self-deprecating account of things experienced, which revolves around a skillful interweaving of the personal and public spheres, Pierluigi Battista is a father who does not get on his high horse, but strives to listen to his daughter Marta’s thoughts and reasons, yet never fails to make his voice heard when he sees that some of yesterday’s essential values are in danger of being lost in the great change that is revolutionizing the world.