Us: what works (and what doesn’t) of the remake of This is us

Useless, avoidable, ugly, approximate, hasty, rushed, unworthy, not at all up to par. These are the kindest adjectives that it was possible to read on Twitter at the time of the airing of the first episode of Wethe remake of This is us which aroused a hive of controversy even before we saw what path the Italian adaptation would take, who has chosen the path of fidelity while taking some small liberties. The story of the Pierò slavishly follows that of the Pearson, with the couple formed by Pietro (Lino Guanciale) and Rebecca (Aurora Ruffino) who, in the Turin of the eighties, are expecting triplets only to lose one and decide to adopt a newly arrived black baby. in the hospital, abandoned a few hours earlier at the entrance to a fire station. Let’s try, then, to consider another perspective on which perhaps we had not focused: many Rai1 viewers do not know what it is This is us, and this was the first time they had witnessed a story as beautiful and as full of humanity as that of the Pearsons.

It is useless to imprint all the criticisms addressed to We on the comparison with the original, because deep down we know that, whatever the screenwriters had done, they would have been massacred (Too faithful? Copy and paste. Too distant? Full-blown heresy). The history of audiovisual is full of adaptations of untouchable stories and works– let’s think about Romeo and Juliet, Little Women, Oliver Twist And The Miserables -: why pay homage to a beautiful story like that of This is usinstead of being seen as a tribute, it takes on the contours of reproach, greeted by a wave of violent and prejudiced hatred? Because those who do not have a subscription to Sky and Prime Video and have never seen the original cannot have the opportunity to become passionate about this story of love and growth that spans more than thirty years of history and that can be translated, with the necessary precautions, so good in different social contexts?

If we ever find a problem a We it could be just that: the adaptation, at least from the first episodes, does not seem to cling and domesticate itself to the Italian social context. Apart from the reference to the cities – Turin, Rome and Milan -, We follows very faithfully the screenplay of This is us, even copying certain lines, without allowing herself to dare or, at least, to experiment – the scene in which Cate (the good Claudia Marsicano) who, to lose weight, goes to a “compulsive eating center” does, for example, a little ‘ to smile. The Italian context is not the American one: it would have been more logical if the meeting between Cate and Teo took place in the waiting room of a dietician, or not? -. Another striking thing is that not all the performers seem comfortable in the shoes of their characters, as if some of them were blocked by the comparison with the originals, compromising the performance that seems trapped inside watertight bulkheads impossible to break. . Despite all this Weproduced by Cattleya in collaboration with Rai Fiction, we would like to promote it: the one of This is us it is too good a story not to be told, and it would be interesting if other realities of the world were able to make it known by adapting it to the canons of their own country. Of course, for those who just can’t criticize every scene from We telling everyone how unique and inimitable the original is, there is always the remote control.

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