Il Divo

Quite a contrast with last week's movie, this stylish piece from Sorrentino foregrounds cinematographic technique with clever background music to make a drama which never pretends to the documentary. It deals with the top end of society, its manners, masks and gross corruptions. The children in Entre les Murs are saints by comparison. Knowing little of Italian politics - though I remember the perennial Andreotti, the whiff of corruption that hung about him, the tragedies of Aldo Moro and Falcone, and the endlessly interrogated mystery of Calvi (and how can any of these be called "politics"? Oh, and I recall learning back in school that Italy's system of proportional representation led to inherently unstable government and unpalatable dealmaking) - even knowing so little, I found it compelling. A huge amount must have been over my head. I don't know enough to know what percentage that might be but guess it's well north of 50: I don't speak Italian; I know precious little about their political structures; I don't know the names of the politicians, nor remember them from one scene to the next so was frequently lost. But I'd gladly go again, and not just to pick up a few of the threads I missed first time round. For the most part, it's fascinating viewing. The very few longueurs are places where too much explanation is being given, and are defined only by the drive of the rest of the film.

Jumpcuts, flashbacks, flashforwards and leitmotifs create depth and texture. The fizzing glass of migraine cure marks the end of an Act. The focus on his curious hands has its own strange language once his secretary explains it to his inexplicable visitor.

Let's take her as an example of the ambiguity the film revels in. A woman appears at his office, sur commande. She is attractive, very nervous - frightened even. Her blouse is undone by one too many buttons for her to be respectable. Yet she has crows' feet - she must be fortyfive if she's a day, far too old to be a prostitute. What other explanation can there be? She seeks advice from the loyal secretary as if an ingénue from a madam. When she meets Andreotti she is shy, but embraces him. They talk of intimacy, she says she explores herself... The camera focuses on his hair, his physicality. The next time we see her she is on the arm of an Ambassador, and when someone asks her about her painting dismisses it: "I just dabble." Can we believe that Andreotti, whose power could command whomsoever he could choose, would choose a woman d'un certain age to be his companion of the night, or a "dabbler" to paint his portait?

This is a drama, so we can take it only as a means to the construction of a character - one who is undemonstrative, enigmatic.

And yes, so much comes down to the physical presence. Much as there's a hint of The West Wing in that encounter on the diplomat's arm at the ball, even though it's taking the trope of embarrassed recognition to put a different spin on it, so there is an inescapable comparison with Richard III. At least for the English. Er, well, there's the intelligence, the dead bodies strewn on the path to power. And the hunchback. I am ashamed to mention it. Yet it's undeniably there. If we're going to be politically incorrect here, let's go the whole hog and suggest that the Italians, in common with their French neighbours, are much less bothered by political correctness than the Anglo-Saxons.

But like Entre les Murs, it is an intelligent film, treats its audience like adults. And engaged. Whereas Entre les Murs listens to children for once, and shows teachers to be fallible - and neither of them perfect - this film ironises Andreotti's claims to innocence. He is never seen to mandate anything. Enemies die right and left; he prays. The only hint of guilt is circumstantial: the kiss. Later, he jokes that a politician must take care whom he associates with: think of Jesus and Judas. Later still, there is a parody of Leonardo's Last Supper where associates meet to anoint him presidential candidate. No-one kisses and betrays him. They all toast him with wine, white and red, even the cardinal, while he toasts with migraine remedy, his cup of bitterness and guilt.

And his physicality is amazing. Toni Servillo as Andreotti manages to make his neck disappear. He wears a hunchback. His curious hands have a role of their own: praying, or marking pleasure or displeasure. He holds his body still as if nothing could move him. His stillness exemplifies his power - and occasionally his vulnerability.

It's overdone in places, no question. The ears are too much. The abject senator whose name I forget (the ugly, stupid one who complains that A never showed him any affection) is a caricature. No-one would vote for him. The kingmaker whose name I forget wouldn't have tested the slide of the marble floor IRL even if he fancied himself as a funky dancer. The scene after Andreotti is indicted, where he is sitting with his wife who is channel-hopping to avoid the appalling news - very stagey, but effective. After many channel-hops she finds a station playing a torch song and as the two of them sit there and she reaches out a hand to him and tears up, you can't be sure whether she is weeping for her husband, or the man she thought he was.

Along with the swooping and savvy camera work, an extraordinarily eclectic range of incidental music, sometimes so brief it was over before I noticed it.

The credits played to this:


Update
Why I walked out of my own biopic: an interview with Andreotti about the film here.