Pompei: Below the Clouds is the sort of documentary that’s hard to pin down exactly what it’s about. 

The title would lead you to believe it’s about the eruption of Vesuvius… but the opening scenes are seemingly scattershot depictions of modern-day life in Naples, like a tour on the trains winding through the city, a reoccurring motif. But what solidly binds these disparate slices of life remains elusive. Is Pompei about what it’s like to live — both literally and figuratively — below the clouds of the possible calamity that Vesuvius forever threatens?

But by the documentary’s conclusion, the actual tie that binds its roaming structure appears to be that every single subject is a socially-subsidized endeavor, placing Pompei in the leftist lineage of the rest’s Italian neorealism (including a scene from Journey to Italy, set in Naples and directed by Roberto Rossellini, a master of neorealist documentaries).   

What’s government’s role in preserving Pompei? And preventing another Pompei? And helping contemporary citizens who choose to live next to Pompei? And building what led to the rise of Pompei? 

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Daniel Blumberg is becoming one of our great composers.