Euthanasia, laws and beliefs in the less pyrotechnic Sorrentino

The Italian Paolo Sorrentino returns to the world of politics, this time through a fictional head of state: Mariano De Santis (Toni Servillo), a veteran jurist who faces his final months in office with an euthanasia law and two pardons on the table. If the filmmaker portrayed former leader Giulio Andreotti through a bubbling pop artifact in Il divo, he has now opted for a more reflective approach and a surprisingly restrained visual narrative that alludes to the prudence (or indecision?) of his new protagonist. The camera movements that marked La gran bellesa are reserved to express moments of particular unease for the character. The exception is a scene that is more histrionic than meaningful (ridiculing the inflexible ceremoniousness of power), but which could also seem like an inadequate echo of previous works... or an authorial toll like Hitchcock's cameos.

The initial scenes, with somewhat melancholic encounters tinged with memories of his deceased wife, set the tone for a late-career work about the (healthy) doubt in the exercise of power, about the usefulness of politics and its capacity to impact lives and deaths. Sorrentino cultivates a certain gravity and a (counter-hegemonic?) praise of pause, while remaining committed to offering some kind of enjoyment. Just as he sets aside dynamic camera work or unusual framing, he employs writing resources: sharp dialogues and witty retorts delivered at a different pace, neither better nor worse, than that which characterized the thrilling series The West Wing. In the end, the author falls into a screenwriter's temptation: to tie together all the plots and themes in search of a global meaning that provides a sense of fulfillment, even if this doesn't entirely fit with the evolution of a De Santis who ends up embracing chance and uncertainty.