Il Divo Paolo Sorrentino Italy 2008
A preening mob of soberly suited men stride down a corridor. Slowly, one of the pack pulls a gun shape with his fingers and takes fire at their objective: a smiling middle-aged lady.
So opens the Italian film Il Divo, which leaves no doubt that these men are gangsters - with one crucial difference. Those portrayed are well-known Italian politicians being assembled by their boss at that time, the then Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti.
Director Paolo Sorrentino's fictionalised film doesn't bother pretending that Andreotti is innocent. It recounts his history and opens a window to Italian politics, sometimes with overwhelming detail, but the imaginative visual narrative draws the viewer forward as does Toni Servillo's mesmerising performance as Andreotti. A remarkable film results.
The question asked is how exactly did Andreotti manage to avoid jail in the 1990s. Opening with a bloody set of murders Il Divo shows the deaths of many people allegedly linked to Andreotti in the late 1970s and early 1980s (including former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro and the banker Roberto Calvi). The film then follows his fortunes in his seventh term of office leading to his corruption charges and his effective end as a political force in Italy.
Visual innovation propels Il Divo. One scene compares Andreotti watching a horserace to a political ally fleeing a mafia assassin with equine features. Building in momentum the thundering horses burst past the finish line as the hitman unloads his pistol. Sorrento's roving eye refuses to be constrained by what is essentially a political biopic. Later where a lesser talent might have shown Andreotti's decision to run for the presidency in some back room, Sorrento takes us through a house party and out the back door. Here laid out by a swimming pool in a garden Andreotti and his henchmen preside around a table in a spectacular inversion of our expectations.
Toni Servillo's performance as Andreotti binds the film together. Arguably the international face of Italian cinema since his role in Sorrento's film The Consequences of Love and this year's Gamorra, he appears in Il Divo the first time rising from a table, his head is ringed by a ruff of acupuncture needles in a forlorn attempt to cure constant headaches. Later on as the mafia connections are revealed an initiation rite is shown: he has his finger pricked with a familiar looking needle. He fills the role easily. With flapped ears, a hunch and jowls he's never less than mesmerising here, often barely talking yet firmly in charge.
Unfortunately background information overwhelms Il Divo. Each character (and there are many) is introduced by name, rank and nickname. No doubt an Italian audience would know something of each of these caricatures. An English one would not. The audience is slowly crushed beneath the task of trying to remember them all in what leads towards one of the biggest corruption case in Italian history.
