The Hand of God (2021)

The Hand of God feels like a memory you didn’t live but somehow recognize: Paolo Sorrentino turns 1980s Naples into a sunlit, noisy, aching dream where comedy and tragedy share the same crowded streets. What makes it special is how effortlessly it captures the messy intimacy of family life—its warmth, its humiliations, its sudden ruptures—before letting that emotional shockwave reshape a young man’s sense of himself. The film is ravishing to look at, but it’s not beauty for beauty’s sake; every image seems to carry the weight of longing, grief, and the strange, liberating moment when pain starts to become purpose. It’s not a conventional crowd-pleaser (and it does contain explicit sexual content), but if you’re open to a deeply felt coming-of-age story that lingers like a song from your youth, it’s absolutely worth the trip.

The Hand of God is clearly Paolo Sorrentino trying to turn a slice of 1980s Naples—family chaos, Maradona mania, and sudden grief—into a personal coming-of-age memory piece. When it’s on form, it’s gorgeous to look at and occasionally very funny, with a lived-in sense of place and a few scenes that hit with real emotional force. But it’s also loose and episodic, drifting from character to character and sometimes feeling more like a scrapbook of moments than a shaped story, especially in the second half where threads don’t fully pay off. If you need tight plotting, consistent momentum, or clear character arcs, this may test your patience; if you’re open to a meandering, bittersweet mood piece with adult content and bursts of beauty, it can still be worth the time.