Paolo Sorrentino
Il Divo

Let's say right away that I watched it on a pirated copy, and this doesn't bode well, not in the sense that I regret it, but solely because it was poorly taken, by an amateur with a webcam, and on top of that, the file was corrupted in some parts.

Having exhausted the preamble, I believe that if an 18-year-old who doesn't feel like studying republican history watched the crib notes prepared by this film:

a) they would be left wanting to know more and perhaps read a serious book;

b) if they aren't particularly sharp, they leave the theater shrugging and maybe say: cool the hunchback, he screwed everyone over, he will never go to prison again.

In either case, the youngster comes out improved, as they will study or will have understood from the simple yet emblematic Andreotti example how things work in Italy, how they have always worked since June 2, '46, and how even more so they have worked for the past 15 years. Montanelli used to say that corruption is incorrigible in Italy, it's been there for two thousand years, we've corrupted everyone, even those who had come with the noble intent to subjugate us. Therefore...

If instead, you're not a youngster, the film in question, apart from some scenic ideas, adds nothing to what is already known about Giulio’s alleged guilt, so much so that Baccini had already made a very amusing song about it, condensing in three minutes the evident theorem of the film, which could thus have been spared.

Quite another thing would have been to make a nice little film about the Andreotti trial, clearly explaining the sentence that sees him colluding with the mafia up to the eighties but "acquitted" not for not having committed the act, but due to statute of limitations (not more than a few days ago I saw the lawyer, now I believe a deputy, Buongiorno say on TV that Giulio was acquitted in full formula). And instead of leaving this detail in the end credits, which almost no one reads, since that's the stage where people stretch their legs while waiting for the lights to come on, it would have been of public service to clearly explain what this damn statute of limitations is, since not everyone is obliged to know it and we don’t all become lawyers, but since many go to the cinema, it would have at least been helpful for those many to know it. Maybe then the next day at work, amidst Inter having taken the dumb Murinho and the garbage known to be the Neapolitans' fault because they're uncivilized and don't separate their trash, one can also exclaim without fear of being taken for a fool: hey, did you know that Andreotti favored the mafia?

One might say, but this is cinema, not information, that's what newspapers and TV are for. Yeah, sure, in a normal country that would indeed be the norm, but since we are not a normal country (never or anymore?, you choose), the chance to easily explain to Italians who the real Divo Giulio is was too tempting, and it was wasted. But what the hell did they think at Cannes? Noio vulevam savuar se l’è la prescrissiòn...

Since, having aborted the social function along the way, the film itself, artistically, is worth as much as those of Alvaro Vitali, at this point maybe less, seeing as years later they explain very well who we are and where we come from, this entire reconstruction effort fiction-like seems pointless because it’s blurred and sterile. A middle ground between an intention to denounce and a lack of guts to sign it.

In short, it's like making a film about Berlusconi and making people infer that he built his fortune on some mystery or with some wrongdoing, without specifying names, surnames, circumstances, facts. Which exist and are all documented in sentences (of statute of limitations, obviously) or in memories of mafiosi defined as heroic because they died without "speaking."

How? Oh really? I’m told that the film in question has already been made. Another missed opportunity.

Regards to everyone, to Bartle in person, whom I haven't come across in a long time.