Il divo (2008)

As a person not really familiar with Italian politics, many of the central events of Il Divo were not very familiar to me. Surprisingly, this did not make the film boring or confusing. Rather than being a film about the development in Italian government, Il divo is an almost opera-like tale about a man without qualities, a stone-faced politician who walks through violent political events with a fascinating non-presence. It is precisely this non-presence that seems to have been the inspiration for the director, Paolo Sorrentino. Giulio Andreotti was prime minister in Italy during a time of unrest in Italian history. He was blamed for many crimes (among them, ties to the Mafia) and was acquitted from only a few of them.

I found Il divo to be immensely funny. It's hard to believe that a film about an Italian prime minister could be so funny, but sonehow - it was. Toni Servillo, who played Andreotti, did a magnificent job in embodying this elusive character, who walks through absurd-looking corridors and halls with a hunched back. Andreotti is the bureacrat who almost never appears as a real human beings, not even in the scenes with his wife. The boring face of the main character stands in radical contrast with the lavish style of the film: extravagant camera movements, bright colors, surreal turns (in one scene, we see an otherworldly dance --- drab costumes have suddenly transformed into Fred Astairs!). Sorrentino masterfully changes from style to style: from realism to the absurd, from the violent to the mundane. He never overdoes the political agenda of the film. The soundtrack goes from pompous classical music to seedy pop. It works. If one puts aside references to Tarantino, the film that I thought of several times while watching Il divo was El custodio, a mix of Twin Peaks and societal critique. Il divo is one of the strangest film I've seen in years and one of the best to tackle political corruption.