Pompei: Below the Clouds Review: A Little Perspective

Gianfranco Rosi’s ruminative documentary about living in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius begins with a useful perspective – that of Pliny the Younger, eyewitness to the devastating eruption in 79 AD that buried the city of Pompeii and others under volcanic ash. An unseen narrator reads aloud from his account (“A cloud rose up. It was not clear from which mountain.”) while on the screen of an abandoned moviehouse, footage from another, more recent eruption plays out. We’re barely two minutes in and the film is already synthesizing multiple eras and sliding scales of destruction and ruin. 

It’s all rather stunning to behold, especially in black & white, but Below the Clouds eloquently articulates the maxim that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” That eye sees something very different from a safe remove. By and large, the people featured in Rosi’s documentary are in the path of danger. 

The narration disappears, and the film floats between scenes, as if by free association. To an emergency call center, where residents tearily ask about a tremor. (An old woman, her voice audibly shaking, wonders to the operator, between wars and earthquakes, “which death do they want us to die of?”) To labyrinthine underground tunnels, where Pompeii’s buried glories have been pillaged by grave robbers. To a cargo ship unloading grain from Ukraine, its mountain of product match-cutting to the triangle of Vesuvius. To an afterschool study program, where children learn times tables and plan for a future they assume is assured. To the bowels of the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, where undated statues are incoherently jumbled together in storage, different eras rubbing elbows. “Here, we’re entering eternity,” whispers the curator.

The effect is something like a series of living dioramas, with the viewer swiveling between tableaux and softly encouraged to make their own connections. The camera is observational, but not explanative, and occasionally placed somewhere that broke Below the Clouds’ trance on me. The breathless sense of exploration and danger I first felt as a crew advanced in one of those underground tunnels dissipated when I realized they were being filmed head-on, advancing toward the camera – meaning, a camera had already made the journey ahead of them. There were also a couple of exchanges between colleagues – at the museum, on the task force to investigate grave robbing – that felt overly expositional, as if they were speaking more for the viewer’s benefit than in the conversational shorthand we tend to have in our day-to-day interactions with people we already know. Though that perhaps can be chalked up to the inevitable hiccups that happen when a non-Italian speaker is trying to absorb subtitles and screen images all at once.

Those are quibbling points about a picture that otherwise had me in its thrall. (The original score by The Brutalist Oscar winner Daniel Blumberg – “recorded underwater,” the closing credits note – adds to the sensation of otherworldliness.)  There is so much beauty in the landscape – rendered gray when the eye is on the sky, a striking chiaroscuro under the cloudline – and the strange, dreamlike places the film arrives at, like the antiquities vault and a fire set by roving teen gangs. Yes, roving teen gangs. We learn of their existence in a radio report; if you’re a catastrophist, you might interpret their petty crime campaign as further evidence of doom hanging over the area like condensed vapor. Only ask the Syrian cargo ship worker, who’s just learned of another grain ship bombed in Ukraine, where he’s headed next, and he’ll describe Naples, comparatively, as safe harbor. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

Pompei: Below the Clouds screens exclusively in Austin at AFS Cinema starting Saturday, March 14.

Pompei: Below the Clouds

2026, NR, 114 min. Directed by Gianfranco Rosi.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

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