Il Divo

Or: The Extra­or­di­nary Life of Giulio Andreot­ti. That sub­ti­tle is a nod to the grim fairy­tale gloss laid over this potent, shad­owy sym­bol of Italy by direc­tor Paul Sor­renti­no. Andreot­ti was Prime Min­is­ter sev­en times; he also stood tri­al on 26 occa­sions for con­nec­tions to the Mob along with a string of mur­ders and appar­ent sui­cides, includ­ing that of Rober­to Calvi, the Vat­i­can banker found hang­ing from London’s Black­fri­ars Bridge. Each time Andreot­ti was acquit­ted, but his poi­son still infects Ital­ian polit­i­cal life. Most telling­ly, many believe Andreot­ti ben­e­fit­ted from or was even com­plic­it in the 1978 kid­nap and mur­der of Aldo Moro, for­mer Prime Min­is­ter and his polit­i­cal oppo­nent with­in the Chris­t­ian Demo­c­rat party.

The death of Moro remains the key moment in post-war Italy – polit­i­cal­ly, cul­tur­al­ly, intel­lec­tu­al­ly – and is the metronome by which Sor­renti­no mea­sures out his protagonist’s denial and secret ago­nies. But don’t expect histri­on­ics. Toni Servil­lo, who imbued The Con­se­quences of Love with such still pas­sion, plays Andreot­ti with a qui­es­cent cer­tain­ty of pur­pose, an autis­tic Nos­fer­atu pro­gress­ing unscathed as his fel­low trav­ellers meet a vari­ety of unhap­py end­ings. It’s a mes­meris­ing per­for­mance – touch­ing, com­ic and utter­ly repellent.

Sor­renti­no skips around a con­ven­tion­al nar­ra­tive, telling the con­vo­lut­ed sto­ry through a string of strik­ing motifs: Andreot­ti stalk­ing the night alone but for his body­guards; his recur­rent iron­ic fram­ing as a Chris­t­ian mar­tyr – a toi­let cis­tern at one point serv­ing as a halo; the pose of appar­ent remorse which proves to be noth­ing more moral­ly con­trite than a migraine. The movie relent­less­ly, hyp­not­i­cal­ly con­flates the monk­ish and the dia­bol­i­cal in the man known by the pub­lic as ​‘The Hunch­back’ or sim­ply ​‘Beelze­bub’.

Sorrentino’s detrac­tors will con­tin­ue to com­plain that his work is over­ly man­nered, emo­tion­al­ly detached and self-con­scious­ly shot. Il Divo cer­tain­ly has its share of flashy visu­al tricks and bom­bast. But here the styl­is­tic ticks are jus­ti­fied by the cre­ation of a mas­ter­ful study in moral ambi­gu­i­ty, a spo­ken-word opera of high tragedy and the most degrad­ed prin­ci­ples. Accord­ing to Tony Servil­lo, Andreot­ti saw the film and hat­ed it. But then came the Grand Jury prize at Cannes and huge suc­cess in Italy. Il Divo Giulio, nev­er one to side with losers, has since ​‘recon­sid­ered’ his opinion.