‘La Grazia’ Review: Paolo Sorrentino Opens the Venice Film Festival With a Presidential Drama More Understated Than Usual for Him, and Better For It
The movies of Paolo Sorrentino, like “The Great Beauty” and “The Hand of God,” have always been bursting with color and movement and emotional energy, with torn-up romantic and family passion, all rooted in a baroque flamboyance that can be compelling but also messy and overstated — which is why I blow hot and cold on him, and am usually in the middle. (In Italy, and to a degree in the U.S., he’s been a critics’ darling.) The most recent Sorrentino film, “Parthenope,” was, I thought, a disaster of florid loose ends that never came together.
But in “La Grazia,” the new Sorrentino movie that opened the Venice Film Festival tonight, this director who has long suggested (at least to me) a kind of made-for-TV version of Fellini in the ’70s pulls himself together in a surprising and ironically fastidious way.
The film’s central character is the president of Italy, Mariano De Santis — a fictional character played, in a performance of meticulous and weirdly domineering passivity, by Toni Servillo, the great actor from “The Great Beauty,” “Gomorrah,” and “Il Divo.” The film opens with a long title quoting the Italian constitution’s description of the president’s powers, which are considerable. And given the tenor of our era, which is about global leaders grabbing more and more power, and also given Italy’s history with leaders from Mussolini to Berlusconi (who was prime minister rather than president — a position with even greater power), we wonder if we might be in for a parable of autocratic excess.
But Servillo’s presidente is the exact opposite of that. He’s a widower and a Catholic who views himself as a ceremonial leader, who holds his power close to the vest and holds everything else close to the vest, too. To say that Servillo acts with a poker face would be to vastly understate the unsmiling minimalism of his performance. The actor is now 66, but in “La Grazia” he looks 75, with a fringe of short white hair framing a face that’s handsome in a dour way, contained and grimly patrician, almost frozen with rectitude. It’s the face of an aging banker, or maybe a priest whose faith has slipped away. In this role, Sorvillo looks like Benjamin Netanyahu (though without the animating anger) crossed with David Gergen, with a touch of Armin Mueller-Stahl. That face is formidable, and we have plenty of time to study it, because the movie Sorrentino has built around it is stoic and precise to a fault, just like its scrupulously formal hero. It’s the study of a control freak in transition.
The president’s wife, Aurora, died eight years before, and he has never gotten over it. He still misses her every day. That’s a sign of what a devoted and romantic man he is deep down, but it’s also a sign that he’s caught in the past. He’s finishing out the last six months of his term and appears to be governing on autopilot. De Santis spent most of his career as a judge (as a character observes: once a judge, always a judge), and he now spends his days in the presidential palace, with his daughter, Dorotea (Anna Ferzetti), who’s pert but every bit as dry as her dad, organizing his daily schedule for him. She’s trying to keep him healthy with meals of quinoa and austere fish (no meunière sauce!), and by forcing him to cut out his beloved cigarettes (though he sneaks one in private whenever he can, sort of like Jed Leland in “Citizen Kane” with his cigars).
Early on, De Santis learns from a subordinate that his nickname is “Reinforced Concrete.” Which raises the question: How do you make a dramatic movie out of reinforced concrete? Sorrentino pulls it off in a few cunning ways. Servillo is such a sly actor, and the director showcases his deadpan performance with such slow-build curiosity, that the film is always cueing us to read his mind, to see the glimmers of thought and soul behind the façade. Sorrentino also gives De Santis a wild card or two, like making him a fan of Italian gangsta rap who likes to rap along with it, or having the editor of Vogue come on to him. De Santis is also obsessed with the idea that his wife had an affair, and he keeps pestering their old friend, Coco (Milvia Marigliano) — one of the director’s vintage high-decibel cantankerous divas — to tell him who it is.
Mostly, though, “La Grazia” saddles De Santis, a president who has no real desire to make his mark (he just wants to be a caretaker), with several dilemmas that are enough to give the movie, in its understated way, a pulse of life. He’s being pressed to lend his support to a euthanasia bill, and he won’t do it because he’s torn — between his compassion and his faith. (The pope, played by a striking Rufin Doh Zeyenouin, makes him promise not to.) At the same time, he has to weigh the pardon petitions of two people who killed their mates. In a way, the issues are interlocked: Can he see the embrace of life in allowing someone to choose death, and can he forgive someone who may have had good reason to murder?
“La Grazia,” which means “grace,” turns out to be a parable of our autocratic era after all. Mariano De Santis is the opposite of an autocrat; he’s a leader whose problem is that he rules with too light and unforceful a hand. He has to be coerced into taking a stand. Yet even as that becomes his moral journey, the film has a bone-deep respect for the character’s inner reticence. It’s nostalgic for an era when leaders didn’t use “populism” to prop up their megalomania, when they truly saw themselves as part of a larger whole. That’s what the “grace” of the title means: that Servillo’s De Santis is a man who’s more devoted to his country (and even to his late wife) than he is to himself. The movie will not exactly set your pulse racing. It’s staid. But there’s a hum of inspiration to its meditation.
But in “La Grazia,” the new Sorrentino movie that opened the Venice Film Festival tonight, this director who has long suggested (at least to me) a kind of made-for-TV version of Fellini in the ’70s pulls himself together in a surprising and ironically fastidious way.
The film’s central character is the president of Italy, Mariano De Santis — a fictional character played, in a performance of meticulous and weirdly domineering passivity, by Toni Servillo, the great actor from “The Great Beauty,” “Gomorrah,” and “Il Divo.” The film opens with a long title quoting the Italian constitution’s description of the president’s powers, which are considerable. And given the tenor of our era, which is about global leaders grabbing more and more power, and also given Italy’s history with leaders from Mussolini to Berlusconi (who was prime minister rather than president — a position with even greater power), we wonder if we might be in for a parable of autocratic excess.
But Servillo’s presidente is the exact opposite of that. He’s a widower and a Catholic who views himself as a ceremonial leader, who holds his power close to the vest and holds everything else close to the vest, too. To say that Servillo acts with a poker face would be to vastly understate the unsmiling minimalism of his performance. The actor is now 66, but in “La Grazia” he looks 75, with a fringe of short white hair framing a face that’s handsome in a dour way, contained and grimly patrician, almost frozen with rectitude. It’s the face of an aging banker, or maybe a priest whose faith has slipped away. In this role, Sorvillo looks like Benjamin Netanyahu (though without the animating anger) crossed with David Gergen, with a touch of Armin Mueller-Stahl. That face is formidable, and we have plenty of time to study it, because the movie Sorrentino has built around it is stoic and precise to a fault, just like its scrupulously formal hero. It’s the study of a control freak in transition.
The president’s wife, Aurora, died eight years before, and he has never gotten over it. He still misses her every day. That’s a sign of what a devoted and romantic man he is deep down, but it’s also a sign that he’s caught in the past. He’s finishing out the last six months of his term and appears to be governing on autopilot. De Santis spent most of his career as a judge (as a character observes: once a judge, always a judge), and he now spends his days in the presidential palace, with his daughter, Dorotea (Anna Ferzetti), who’s pert but every bit as dry as her dad, organizing his daily schedule for him. She’s trying to keep him healthy with meals of quinoa and austere fish (no meunière sauce!), and by forcing him to cut out his beloved cigarettes (though he sneaks one in private whenever he can, sort of like Jed Leland in “Citizen Kane” with his cigars).
Early on, De Santis learns from a subordinate that his nickname is “Reinforced Concrete.” Which raises the question: How do you make a dramatic movie out of reinforced concrete? Sorrentino pulls it off in a few cunning ways. Servillo is such a sly actor, and the director showcases his deadpan performance with such slow-build curiosity, that the film is always cueing us to read his mind, to see the glimmers of thought and soul behind the façade. Sorrentino also gives De Santis a wild card or two, like making him a fan of Italian gangsta rap who likes to rap along with it, or having the editor of Vogue come on to him. De Santis is also obsessed with the idea that his wife had an affair, and he keeps pestering their old friend, Coco (Milvia Marigliano) — one of the director’s vintage high-decibel cantankerous divas — to tell him who it is.
Mostly, though, “La Grazia” saddles De Santis, a president who has no real desire to make his mark (he just wants to be a caretaker), with several dilemmas that are enough to give the movie, in its understated way, a pulse of life. He’s being pressed to lend his support to a euthanasia bill, and he won’t do it because he’s torn — between his compassion and his faith. (The pope, played by a striking Rufin Doh Zeyenouin, makes him promise not to.) At the same time, he has to weigh the pardon petitions of two people who killed their mates. In a way, the issues are interlocked: Can he see the embrace of life in allowing someone to choose death, and can he forgive someone who may have had good reason to murder?
“La Grazia,” which means “grace,” turns out to be a parable of our autocratic era after all. Mariano De Santis is the opposite of an autocrat; he’s a leader whose problem is that he rules with too light and unforceful a hand. He has to be coerced into taking a stand. Yet even as that becomes his moral journey, the film has a bone-deep respect for the character’s inner reticence. It’s nostalgic for an era when leaders didn’t use “populism” to prop up their megalomania, when they truly saw themselves as part of a larger whole. That’s what the “grace” of the title means: that Servillo’s De Santis is a man who’s more devoted to his country (and even to his late wife) than he is to himself. The movie will not exactly set your pulse racing. It’s staid. But there’s a hum of inspiration to its meditation.