The best portrait of Berlusconi’s Italy is offered by the film La gran belleza (2013), by Paolo Sorrentino. A merciless portrait, a stark and compassionate look at a time of indulgence, partying and corruption. The moment when the most brilliant minds of millennial Italy gave up, huddled by the siren songs of the prevailing festive politics. As the protagonist of the film, Jep Gambardella, interpreted by Toni Servillo with absolute brilliance, gives up and gives in.
Gambardella, a synthesis of Berlusconi’s Italy, perhaps its best symbol. A brilliant and capable being, abandoned to himself due to lack of faith in the future and exhaustion. All resistance is futile. It is better to surrender, enjoy and continue the party that Raffaella Carrá sang. Victim and executioner of himself, Garbardella sets himself up as an arbiter of good taste when good taste has died, swept away by the prevailing tackiness. Like Italy all under the tutelage of the three times prime minister –or more– Silvio Berlusconi, the great Silvio.
With La gran belleza, perhaps unintentionally, Sorrentino made a subtle criticism, not without ferocity. But the criticism was in the subtext, in an inconspicuous way. He then tried a more direct critique of the same character in Silvio (and the others) (2018) without achieving the same success. Toni Servillo repeated as the protagonist in this more political film, this time as Berlusconi himself, marvelously characterized as him.
Mask after mask, Sevillo seeks in Silvio (and the others) to catch the charisma of the character – who has it – as he seeks to catch his undeniable dark side at the same time: a side that is always shown between lights and tinsel. It is a very difficult task to illuminate the human side of the monster, and much more to humanize the monstrosity of a policy that manipulates and polarizes public opinion, as Berlusconi did in his moments of power, whatever others say. Tease or recognition? Silvio (and the others) turned out to be an exercise between Fellinian and neorealist that did not quite work, due to excessive ambiguity.
Berlusconi himself, a Milanese connoisseur of the Italian soul, was in his own existence a movie character. And the cinema, as a business and as a device of influence, was never alien to him. It can be said that, from the audiovisual empire around Mediaset, from his distribution companies and from his exhibition halls, he influenced Italian cinema like no one had done until then. He also served as a shock, like everything in Berlusconi. His influence on Italian cinema ended up being a plebiscite: you were with him or against him. Were you with his banal and funny film productions, or with productions that mercilessly attacked him, like Sorrentino’s films?
His way of doing politics – and doing business – brought him closer to the Andreotti of Italian politics, or even more so to the ancient emperors of the Roman Empire. Silvio’s way of doing – and living – could not go unnoticed by Tinto Brass, the Venetian director. This indisputable erotomaniac saw a source of inspiration in the supposed bacchanalia organized in the president’s mansions, as he saw it in his excesses and in his power games. Berlusconi reminded him of characters like Caligula (1979), of which Brass had already made a film of those considered erotic. In fact, Brass had confessed, on more than one occasion, his desire to make a film inspired by the powerful Berlusconi rather than the politician or the millionaire businessman. He even announced what he would like the future film to be called: Thank you, Papi, as his private friends apparently called Berlusconi. That film has never been made.
Maybe it’s not necessary either. The story, Berlusconi’s own story, can seem – at least superficially – like a buffoonery or a Tinto Brass production. Thank you daddy!