Euthanasia, laws and beliefs in Sorrentino's less pyrotechnic film

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 last months in office with an euthanasia law and two pardons on the table. If the director 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 refers to the prudence (or indecision?) of his new protagonist. The camera movements that marked The Great Beauty are reserved to express some moment of special unease of the character. The exception is a more histrionic scene that may make sense (ridiculing the inflexible ceremoniousness of power), but which may also seem 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 the missing wife, set the tone for an autumnal work about (healthy) doubt in the exercise of power, about the usefulness of politics and its capacity to influence 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 uses writing resources: sharp dialogues and witty retorts abound, 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 all the plots and themes together in search of a global meaning that provides a sense of fullness, even if this does not entirely fit with the evolution of a De Santis who ends up embracing chance and uncertainty.