Paolo Sorrentino (2008)

There are plenty of subtitles to read in addition to the dialogue.  At the start, there’s background information on the Italian Christian Democratic Party, the Red Brigade, the P2 masonic lodge and the political career of the title character, Giulio Andreotti.  As the narrative gets underway, we’re told, at the first appearance of nearly every sizeable character, who he (it always is a he) is.  This continues at a number of subsequent points, right through to the start of Andreotti’s trial, which began in 1993, in which he was accused of having connections with the Mafia.  At this point, legends on the screen summarise the outcome of the trial and we go into the closing credits.  The writer-director Paolo Sorrentino is right to supply the facts like this – but only because he doesn’t get them across more imaginatively.  (How much will be absorbed – even for the duration of the film – by an audience that isn’t already well versed in modern Italian political history is another matter.)  Imparting information in this way seems an admission of dramatic failure.  But narrative development and exploration of character is evidently not what Sorrentino is into.

I can’t work out from the film and Wikipedia entries whether Andreotti served as Italian prime minister on three or seven separate occasions.  He certainly held high office in seven Italian administrations between 1972 and 1992, when the Italian Christian Democrats were submerged in corruption scandals which virtually extinguished them as a political force.  Nor do I fully understand the relationship between the Mafia trial that began in 1993 and the murder trial that ran for three years from 1996, in which Andreotti was investigated for his role in the 1979 murder of Mino Pecorelli – a journalist who had published allegations that Andreotti had links not only to the Mafia but also to the Red Brigade’s abduction and assassination of Aldo Moro, Andreotti’s predecessor as prime minister, in 1978.  According to Wikipedia, Andreotti was acquitted in 1999 but he was convicted on appeal in 2002 and sentenced to 24 years imprisonment, before being immediately released pending an appeal. In 2003, an appeal court overturned the conviction and acquitted Andreotti of the original murder charge; and the court of Palermo:

‘… acquitted him of ties to the Mafia, but only on grounds of expiration of statutory terms. The court established that Andreotti had indeed had strong ties to the Mafia until 1980, and had used them to further his political career to such an extent as to be considered a component of the Mafia itself.’

Andreotti is still alive (he celebrated his ninetieth birthday in January this year) and Sorrentino’s film amounts – I assume – to a politically engaged statement about him.  Comparing this with the two BBC films about Margaret Thatcher that have been screened in the last few months provides fresh evidence of the continuing lack of any tradition of filmmaking in this country that treats British political leaders in a serious way.  You might have thought that Mrs Thatcher – given how many people (a) are willing to admit that she truly changed the country and (b) really did and do hate her – might buck the trend but evidently not.   The more recent of the two films (the ingeniously named Margaret), about the Tory leadership elections she won and lost in 1975 and 1990 respectively, was merely feeble.  The earlier one, Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley, which I haven’t yet seen, may not be much better but the title is significant.  Echoing the title of Nelson Mandela’s autobiography seems designed for a laugh – to emphasise the relative triviality of Mrs Thatcher’s political journey.

It might still be possible in Britain to make a film of earnest intent about the consequences of the Thatcher government’s policies but the kind of ‘political’ filmmaker impelled to describe the effects of mass unemployment would likely think twice about cross-cutting between these and the political personalities who brought about the demise of mining communities.  Because politicians – current and recent ones anyway – are treated as a joke in this country, their appearance would risk diluting or confusing the emotional force of the material.   The contrast between the buttoned up, inscrutable Andreotti – encased in his heavy-framed spectacles and dark suits that look bullet-proof – and the trail of corruption and violence that’s linked with him might seem to present a similar problem.  This colourless, humourless man looks far removed from anything red-blooded.  But the effect is different.  Il Divo is a very limited piece of work but Sorrentino does at least communicate anger about Andreotti – and manages to connect the image of the man with the events for which Sorrentino holds him responsible.

There is, though, an intrinsic difficulty in making a film – at least for the international market – about a corrupt politico.  High-level political skulduggery may be treated as a serious theme – Il Divo won the Prix du Jury at Cannes in 2008 – but admirers of this film, outside Italy at least, would be more honest if they admitted that a story about an Italian politician who wasn’t corrupt would be a more radical idea – given the assumptions we make about the Italian political system (and whether those assumptions are right or wrong).  Sorrentino makes clear his point of view immediately.  What follows contains no surprises.  Some of the actors make an impression through their physique and physiognomy but – because they don’t come to mean anything to us as characters and in spite of a few bits of flashy violence – there are no real shocks either.   (The film is visually striking – but often in the style of a sophisticated commercial or pop video.)

As Andreotti, Toni Servillo gives a remarkable performance:  Mark Kermode, rattling on about the film on BBC News 24, wasn’t too far wide of the mark when he described Il Divo as essentially a vampire movie.   Servillo’s determined greyness and (except for the comically folded-over ears) anonymous features seem antithetical to celebrity charisma.  Yet his hunched glide and toneless hushed voice give Andreotti a magnetising undead quality.  This is all the more startling given how few other people who come within his orbit manage to remain undead too.  But what you see and hear from Servillo in the first ten minutes of the film is pretty well what you get for the remaining 100:  there’s no deepening or expansion of his portrait.  The biggest jolts to our understanding of Andreotti occur at the rare moments when he betrays some kind of humanly believable detail – such as when he confesses to an adolescent passion for the sister of the famous actor Vittorio Gassman.    Perhaps this is also why it’s his relationships with the only two significant women in the story that register more strongly than any others.  His wife Livia (Anna Bonaiuto) is clenched and blinkered in her loyalty to him.  His secretary Enea (Piera Degli Esposti) scolds Andreotti but generates more warmth of affection than anyone else in his chilly life.

29 March 2009