Power corrupts, absolutely

Seven-time Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti first entered politics as a senator for the Christian Democrat party in 1947.

He had cast a daunting shadow across the European landscape for most of the twentieth century, when, during the early ‘90s, having presided over a one-party government for 44 years, the Tangentopoli (or Bribesville) scandals finally hit.
A series of show trials and sensational revelations followed. He was investigated for his role in the 1979 murder of Mino Pecorelli, a journalist who had published allegations that Andreotti had ties to the Mafia and to the kidnapping of former Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro. A court acquitted him in 1999 after a case that lasted three years, but he was convicted on appeal in November 2002, sentenced to twenty-four-years imprisonment and (again) immediately released pending a further appeal.
“He seemed to have a positive aversion to principle, even a conviction that a man of principle was doomed to be a figure of fun,” noted his old mucker Margaret Thatcher at the time.
Bloodied but unbowed, Andreotti continues to sit as a senator for life; last year, his abstention from a Senate vote resulted in the resignation of Prime Minister Romano Prodi.
A weirdly charismatic entity, a champion of Catholic values with long-standing ties to the Vatican and the underworld, a hunched schemer, Andreotti is Il Divo (the god) to his friends, Belzebù (Beelzebub) to his enemies and impossible to pin down.
The original Teflon politician, his sinister leanings have inspired tonnes of newsprint and Don Licio Lucchesi, the high ranking politico with links to the mafia in The Godfather Part III.
No conventional biopic could hope to do him justice. Happily, Paolo Sorrentino’s winner of the Jury Prize at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival is no conventional biopic.
A stylish swoop through the shadowy Byzantine world of Italian realpolitik, in Il Divo events and people literally swirl around the Man who Would Be God.
“Fellini was a definite influence as was Scorsese,” the filmmaker tells me. “The way they work with reality reinvented, the originality of their cinematic language. I also watched a lot of Elio Petri and Francesco Rosi. Especially Petri’s Investigation Of A Citizen Above Suspicion and Todo Modo. In order to condense this much Italian history I had to think and use abstractions.”
Speaking through an interpreter at Dublin’s fabulous Italian Cultural Institute recently, the writer-director insisted that he had no interest in a straight-up character assassination, despite the frequently questionable actions of his controversial subject.
“I’m trying to tell a story, not condemn,” he says. “It would be a terrible waste of energy to just hate like that. Andreotti is contradictory and mysterious, not simply good or bad. He is cynical but human.”
It is not the first time that Mr. Sorrentino has dabbled in the dark side. In his international hit thriller, The Consequences Of Love, a heroin-addicted mafia foot-soldier steals from his bosses. In 2006’s The Family Friend, a repugnant loan-shark demands sexual favours. The director does seem to gravitate towards the most appalling scoundrels.
“I am interested in multi-faceted characters,” he says. “They have questionable morality because they are not simple. Simple is just not that interesting. All people have good and bad aspects and it is interesting to see how the two work together.”
Il Divo, however, is more than a stylish character study. Its profound implications may be delivered with considerable panache but that does not diminish its political potency.
“I was mainly interested in the secrecy,” says Mr. Sorrentino. “It is a definite feature of Italian politics, a total lack of transparency going back to the Cold War. Power is secret. It is what happens behind closed doors. The primary objective was to make a film that would be judged as a film. But I am happy that I could bring back to Italians some of the issues that had been forgotten.”
I wonder if making a film in which journalists and political opponents frequently ‘disappear’ wasn’t a little unnerving?
“I wasn’t too worried,” he shrugs. “Maybe at the start. But it wasn’t too serious. Once I started making the film I was always too busy to feel frightened.”
Silvio Berlusconi gets a name check but such lesser rogues are left by the sidelines. This, Mr. Sorrentino assures me, was not down to censorship, but the sheer volume of history carried within the script.
“There are so many other characters that could have been involved,” he says. “But the film essentially had to focus on Andreotti. It was the most difficult choice to make. What to leave in. What to take out. There were many events and people that would have been perfect but the movie is two hours long.”
Inevitably, it hasn’t been easy bringing this vast, ambitious project to a cinema near you. Mr. Sorrentino may be one of the hottest directors of the twenty-first century but as soon as they read the script potential backers such as the Medusa/RAI Cinema duopoly fled the scene alongside interested TV parties and product placement.
Andreoitti himself is said to be furious, a fine compliment indeed as far as the filmmaker is concerneed.
“He famously never reacts to criticism,” says Mr. Sorrentino. “But Il Divo made him angry. That’s a big thing for me.”

Il Divo is released March 20. A Paolo Sorrentino retrospective is at the IFI from March 15