Sep 18 2008
Power, corruption, lies
Just another day in the life on an Italian politician, perhaps, but
it makes for compelling cinema, writes Gabriella Coslovich.
In Australia, government ministers caught drunk and dancing in their undies get dumped. In Italy, some prime ministers dance with murder, Mafia and corruption scandals, and walk away unscathed. In fact, they might even be rewarded with a life membership of the Italian parliament. Giulio Andreotti was.
Who’s Andreotti, you ask.
Arguably Italy’s most important politician of the past 50 years, he has been prime minister seven times, in parliament for 62 consecutive years, and trails a record of scandals that makes the incumbent divo, Silvio Berlusconi, look like a preening puppy. Andreotti’s extraordinary life is the focus of a new Italian film, Il Divo, which is showing at the Italian Film Festival in Melbourne, after screening to critical acclaim in Cannes this year, where it took out the Jury Prize.
That success for Naples-born writer/director Paolo Sorrentino came alongside fellow Italian Matteo Garrone’s Grand Prize for Gomorra, a film about the Mafia. This quinella made front-page news in Italy and prompted predictions of a renaissance of the national cinema.
In Italy, prime ministers seem to go in and out of fashion as often as style shifts on the country’s esteemed catwalks. That the nation continues to function amid its infamous political instability, scandals and corruption is a mystery that baffles even the native Italian.
“I have never understood this either,” says Sorrentino, speaking by phone from Toronto, where Il Divo is about to screen in that city’s film festival.
“And yet, this country, despite all its problems, continues to develop; it does not lag behind. In reality, Italians are much better than their politicians.”
The term “il divo” suggests a certain type of man – suave, slick and supercilious, a star of operatic dimensions who radiates vanity and entitlement. Every country has a political “divo” or two – Australia has been unusually blessed, flaunting the Zegna-suited Paul Keating, the silver-haired bodgie Bob Hawke, and the silvertail Andrew Peacock. Italy, of course, has the super-tanned and super-taut-faced Berlusconi.
But Sorrentino’s use of the term “il divo” is archly ironic – Andreotti is hunchbacked, short, plain and so passionless as to be practically “unItalian”. He is pale, sickly, flap-eared and a chronic sufferer of migraines. His “divo” quality resides in his Machiavellian capacity to survive, even as he faces the strongest counter-power in Italy, the Mafia. Indeed, in his nerdiness, political cunning and absolute obsession with power Andreotti evokes a recent Australian prime minister. Except that Andreotti, a highly religious man, seems altogether more sinister.
For Sorrentino, Andreotti is consummately intriguing – ambiguous, obsessive and psychologically complex, a bullet-proof survivor leaving a sprawl of bloody corpses in his wake. He has been accused, and acquitted, of collusion with the Mafia, and of the murder of Italian journalist Mino Pecorelli. Some consider him at least partly responsible for the death of his colleague Aldo Moro, chairman of the Christian Democrat Party, who was kidnapped by the Marxist-Leninist terrorist group le Brigate Rosse (the Red Brigades) in March 1978. Moro’s bullet-riddled corpse was found in Via Caetani, Rome, 55 days later.
Sorrentino researched Andreotti’s life for a year before he started writing the script of Il Divo, yet despite this immersion, he cannot decide whether the man is guilty or not.
“Italy is full of mysteries and Andreotti is one of those mysteries,” Sorrentino says. “People who have spent many years studying Andreotti have not been able to work it out, so how could I after a year?”
Nevertheless, the film leaves the viewer with a deep suspicion of the man.
“You have all the reasons to be suspicious of this ambiguous and contradictory person,” says Sorrentino, “That’s why he is represented as a type of modern-day Nosferatu.” In Italy, Il Divo, which cost about $US6.7 million ($A8.4 million) to make, grossed about that much at the box office in its first six weeks. But will Australian audiences unfamiliar with the complexities of Italian politics appreciate its nuances? A glossary at the start of the film testifies to its complexities, but Sorrentino believes the film transcends Italian politics and is a meditation on power.
Some outstanding performances, in particular by Toni Servillo as Andreotti, are reason enough to see the film, as is its dark humour, sharp editing, dynamic soundtrack and lush cinematography. To counter the potential tedium of a film about church and state, Sorrentino has crafted Il Divo like a “rock opera”, with a score comprising everything from Italian pop to the classics .
With his unusual biographical treatment of Andreotti, he has been credited with inventing a new language of Italian film. He is comfortable with the assessment but dismisses suggestions he and Gomorra’s director, Matteo Garrone, are responsible for a rebirth in the national cinema. Their Cannes success was a “happy coincidence”, and Italy was in no need of a renaissance.
“Many great directors have been working and making films in Italy,” he says, pointing to the likes of Mario Bellochio, Nanni Moretti and Bernardo Bertolucci.
Little though it has to do with the plot, I cannot help but ask about the film’s cryptic final dedication, “to Daniela, who saved me”. “Daniela is my wife,” Sorrentino says.
And from what did she save you? “I can’t tell you. It’s between her and me,” he says, adding just a little to the sumptuous list of Italian mysteries.
The Italian Film Festival runs to October 5. Details: italianfilmfestival.com.au
Giulio Andreotti: political survivor
BORN in Rome on January 14, 1919. Statesman, politician, writer, journalist and one of the leading figures in the Italian Christian Democrat Party, which held power from the postwar period until the early 1990s.
Andreotti has dominated the political stage in Italy for 50 years and has served seven times as prime minister, elected for the first time in 1972 (his government, which lasted only nine days, was the most short-lived in the history of the republic). The last of his seven governments ended in 1992, a little more than a year after it was formed. From 1993 on, Andreotti was accused by several Mafia turncoats of being linked to the Cosa Nostra. He was acquitted.
Andreotti was also tried for the murder of journalist Mino Pecorelli. He was acquitted in 1999, sentenced to 24 years in 2002 and fully acquitted by the Court of Cassation (Italy’s highest appeal court) in 2003.
Andreotti now sits on the Third Standing Committee (Foreign Affairs, Emigration) and the Special Committee for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights.
He was made a senator for life in 1991.
Power, corruption, lies – Gabriella Coslovich – September 18, 2008 – Fairfax Digital – This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/news/executive-style-home/culture/power-corruption-lies/2008/09/18/1221330983162.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2
