Dir. Paolo Sorrentino, Italy, 2008, 117 mins
Cast: Toni Servillo, Anna Bonaiuto, Giulio Bosetti
Review by Mike Bartlett
What do we mean when we say a film is “stylish”? Do we mean it's visually impressive? That it plays fast and loose with freeze-frames, jump cuts, time-lapse photography and other items in movie's bag of tricks? Or do we mean it has a funky soundtrack to counterpoint the quickfire dialogue? If so, Paolo Sorrentino's third feature, Il Divo , is stylish with a capital S. Its portrait of the Machiavellian Italian politician and seven times Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti comes on like House Of Cards directed by Quentin Tarantino. The various protagonists circle round each other or meet clandestinely firing off witticisms like so many actors rehearsing their roles in Jackie Brown while political opponents are dispatched in bloody shootouts. Indeed, at one point, Andreotti and his cronies roam the corridors of power in true Reservoir Dogs slo-mo.
But what if we're more ambitious in our definition of “style”? What if we take it to mean the whole conceptual framework of a film, the aesthetic and formal strategies adopted being the key producers of meaning? Now Sorrentino's work doesn't appear clever so much as shallow and opportunistic.
It's been said by many reviewers that you have to understand Italian politics to appreciate Il Divo . Well, I knew precious little about Andreotti going into this picture, so perhaps I'm at a disadvantage. But I'm also aware that I knew just as little about him coming out of it. It might be argued that Sorrentino has hijacked Tarantino's traits to make an ironic comment on a political system that is permanently two steps away from the pompous absurdity of the Mafia. But that shouldn't mean that the characters feel like two-dimensional grotesques or that the complexities of court intrigue can be satisfactorily explained in black-comic vignettes replete with punchline.
There is a long tradition in English art of using caricature to satiric effect – think of Hogarth, Swift, Dickens. But the blunt instruments that satire offers are always wielded with a strong sense of righteous anger or desire for social reform. Sorrentino, by contrast, seems like a naughty child who has discovered in this grim true story the perfect vehicle for tongue-in-cheek putdown or crowd-pleasing shocks. Like a restless flibbertigibbet, he twirls from one exciting camera move to the next, shedding any extraneous nuance that might get in the way.
Indeed, all the important exposition is achieved through headache-inducing infodumps of text at the beginning, astons appearing on screen as each character is introduced. The fact that a similar amount of text is needed at the end to relay how everything turned out is indicative of the way Sorrentino avoids any political complexity in the development of his narrative. His imagistic tomfoolery is too magpie frenetic to want to get bogged down in something as pedantic as the way his country's system works. So that, in seeking to put a gloss on uncomfortable truths, the film ironically feels as superficial and mercenary in its desire to please as the very politician it demonises.
|
