Silvio Berlusconi has died at the age of 86 after months hospitalized due to chronic leukemia. The excesses of the life of the founder of the right-wing party Forza Italiaowner of Mediaset and Prime Minister of Italy up to three times, are the starting point of the wild biopic directed by Paolo Sorrentino: ‘Silvio (and the others)’, available on Amazon Prime Video and Filmin.
It was Silvio’s hand
The film places us at a difficult moment for Silvio Berlusconi’s career: recently out of government and with all the accusations of corruption and making deals with the mafia pending to resolve. Sergio Morra appears on this stage, an ambitious young man who wants to ingratiate himself with Berlusconi to give a boost to the business he has in hand. For this, he must speak their same language: that of parties, women and excess power.
The truth is that no one was surprised when Paolo Sorrentino premiered ‘Silvio (and the others)’ in 2018, since the director is a expert in capturing excesses on screen and in not cutting a hair when launching poison darts against certain aspects and personalities from their own country.
This was his penultimate film, before ‘It was the hand of God’ and just after ‘Youth’ and the series ‘The Young Pope’ and ‘The New Pope’. The Italian director co-scripted it with Umberto Contarello, Sorrentino’s regular in films like ‘La gran belleza’).
the tape is a cocktail of the best and worst of Sorrentino’s cinema: on the one hand, visually it’s crazywith montage sequences worthy of the most inspired video clip and a Soundtrack totally in tune with what each scene shows us.
All this at the service of the director’s clear criticism of the world of “them” (that is what the original title, ‘Loro’) means), of those who hold power: a package of luxury and waste that hides moral rottenness and his insatiable struggle to get a bigger and bigger piece of the pie.
A cynical portrait as well as fascinating, which mixes reality and interpretation and captivates at times, although at others its lengthy duration of two and a half hours accentuate the feeling of go around the same thing too many times until it becomes repetitive.
However, his moments of brilliance and a colossal Tono Servillo playing that unleashed Berlusconi make it worth approaching this unclassifiable biopic, perfect to reflect on what kind of people we allow to hold powerr.
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