ITALY/FRANCE, 2008, 117 MIN
DIRECTED BY PAOLO SORRENTINO
In Italian with English subtitles
Southeast Premiere
Actor Toni Servillo is Guilio Andreotti. Period. Known as an actor's director, Sorrentino, in his third partnering with Servillo, creates an exceptional onscreen collaboration, with great acting on Servillo's part, and equal inventiveness and boldness on the director's. The story of Andreotti, the seven-time Italian Prime Minister felled by implication in a wide variety of illegal activities, including Mafia connections, offers up great drama and ambiguity. Sorrentino takes as his cue the man's favorite movie, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as key to his characterization--the mask of a normal and predictable man or a mysterious and darkly private persona. You don't have to be informed about Italian politics to be mesmerized by the edge of your seat suspense. It's the movie Machiavelli would have made if he lived now and were a filmmaker instead of a writer, an illustration of how to gain and hold power that brims with intensity. Entertaining, densely informative, and risky, IL DIVO--winner of the Jury Prize at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and a European Film Award for Best Actor--is spectacular and epic filmmaking with power and corruption at its core.
DIRECTED BY PAOLO SORRENTINO
In Italian with English subtitles
Southeast Premiere
Actor Toni Servillo is Guilio Andreotti. Period. Known as an actor's director, Sorrentino, in his third partnering with Servillo, creates an exceptional onscreen collaboration, with great acting on Servillo's part, and equal inventiveness and boldness on the director's. The story of Andreotti, the seven-time Italian Prime Minister felled by implication in a wide variety of illegal activities, including Mafia connections, offers up great drama and ambiguity. Sorrentino takes as his cue the man's favorite movie, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as key to his characterization--the mask of a normal and predictable man or a mysterious and darkly private persona. You don't have to be informed about Italian politics to be mesmerized by the edge of your seat suspense. It's the movie Machiavelli would have made if he lived now and were a filmmaker instead of a writer, an illustration of how to gain and hold power that brims with intensity. Entertaining, densely informative, and risky, IL DIVO--winner of the Jury Prize at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and a European Film Award for Best Actor--is spectacular and epic filmmaking with power and corruption at its core.
