Preening Mussolini resonates with our times in nightmarish study of craven opportunity
Mussolini: Son of the Century ★★★★
The political biopic is recast as a fever dream in this whirlwind Italian drama, which turns the rise of fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in the 1920s into a nightmarish study of craven opportunity and a nation’s seduction.
Paolo Pierobon as Gabriele D’Annuzio in Mussolini: Son of the Century.Credit:
Underpinned by the charged vision of British filmmaker Joe Wright and a compelling, compulsive lead performance by Luca Marinelli as the preening, self-obsessed newspaper editor turned politician, the eight hour-long episodes have a furious energy. Power is perpetual: an aphrodisiac, a weapon, a belief system.
The genre’s stately conventions do not apply, which is fitting since Mussolini equally has no use for the state’s institutions. In the first episode, he announces he is “against everything”. A socialist turned nationalist, the World War I veteran sells a vision of a triumphant nation righting past grievances. “Fascism is born,” he declares with but a few hundred black-shirted followers.
The energy of Mussolini’s performative speeches is matched by the industrialised throb of the anachronistic but impactful electronic score by Chemical Brother Tom Rowlands.
Spanning 1919 to 1925, the Italian-language limited series was adapted from M. Son of the Century, a 2018 historical novel by the acclaimed Italian author Antonio Scurati. A mix of archival documentation and vivid narration, the book put the budding despot at its centre and the show keeps him there.
Mussolini: Son of the Century.Credit:
Marinelli’s Mussolini preens for his acolytes and provides running commentary for the audience. “This is my time,” he boasts. “History is made with outcasts.” Whether in the Parliament or the bedroom, you’re embedded with the demanding protagonist.
His shaved head and clenched jaw providing endless angles for Wright, Marinelli shows how Mussolini relentlessly overcame every barrier to complete control. He is calculated, cruel and self-advancing; when a rival nationalist draws headlines, Mussolini has a meltdown and has to be repurposed by his wealthy backer and mistress, Margherita Sarfatti (Barbara Chicarelli). “I’m a consistent animal. I betray everyone,” he confesses to the camera. “Including myself.” The character isn’t humanised by being made likeable, he’s humanised by his corrosive flaws and how attractive they are to a faltering nation.
The contemporary implications are obvious, and alongside Wright the show’s writers, including Gomorrah co-creator Stefano Bises, never overdo the parallels between the 1920s and 2020s. Mussolini is a Trump-like archetype, whether railing against “parasites”, making martial promises, or following the money. Mussolini’s fascist movement is initially pro-worker, railing against the ruling order, but when the Socialists set off strikes and land seizures, the wealthy pay off Mussolini to have his thugs restore the status quo with violence.
As Mussolini manipulates the levers of control, Wright is audacious with the means of image-making. The director’s films have always been visually involved, whether it’s the one-shot Dunkirk experience in Atonement or the propulsive action sequences in Hanna, but Mussolini: Son of the Century gives him a broader, almost fantastical canvas. Wright and cinematographer Seamus McGarvey roam the sets, and he uses archival footage as a kind of rear projection for the national psyche. It can be overwhelming, even hinting at a rapturous trance state, but that also suggests how Italians succumbed to Mussolini.
Wright and Marinelli, whose collaboration here feels titanic for how in tune they are, do not take a backwards step. It’s how they make the past apply to the present. Always bracing, the show acknowledges Mussolini’s eventual fate, stripped of power, executed, and strung up in public during the final months of World War II, but his aims live on. “We’re still here,” Mussolini promises.
Mussolini: Son of the Century is now streaming on SBS on Demand.
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