Victims of circumstance, or of ourselves?

“Its your fault, you know? How you end up is your own fault”.

Victims of circumstance and the social politics of environment are we, or victims of our own worst enemy - ourselves? That is the question that Pasolini asks and tries to find the best possible answer to in Mamma Roma. With contempt must we look at the individual and questionable action of each character here, or instead with pity? Is it the injustices of one’s environment which forces the carving out of a corrupted morality of one who can’t get by without turning to a life of vice, or is it the individual choice we make to take part in that corruption for the survival it brings to those who take part in it and death to those who go down a righteous path? Crime and Punishment will tell you that the injustices of one’s environment will you put on the path of a life of crime, but Mamma Roma here also tries to counter that notion too with the power one has with their individuality and choice. Retain your morality, suffer on Earth and perhaps splendor will await in eternity, or, lose your morality, gain all the spoils on Earth through the means of injustice, to which nothing does it all amount to in eternity when the depths of Hell you reach - which do you go with? As always seems to be the case with Pasolini, for such a simple premise, especially in the neo-realist sense, there is such a deep underbelly to the very nature of morality that is introduced, executed, and seen through to its very end in a very profound manner.