Series delights at the Mostra del cinema
Series seem like a foreign body at a film festival, like aliens from the banal world of television. But in recent years, the perception and appreciation of series has changed fundamentally. There is less fear of contact, more and more prominent actors and renowned directors are taking part in series. This year, Venice dared to experiment by placing four so-called mini-series (with a running time of between six and eight hours) in the official programme (Out of Competition). What was on show here was one of the highlights of the festival.
The Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón has often been invited to Venice with his films. He opened the festival in 2013 with ‘Gravity’ and most recently won the Golden Lion in 2018 with ‘Roma’ and subsequently several Oscars. When a successful film director like Cuarón makes a series, you can't help but be excited. ‘I don't even know how to shoot for television, for me it was seven films that I made,’ said Cuarón in Venice.
In ‘Disclaimer’, Cate Blanchett plays the successful journalist and documentary filmmaker Catherine Ravenscroft. She has just been honoured with a TV award, lives in a stylishly renovated house in London and is happily married. Her husband Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen) runs a number of charity organisations, only their son Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee) doesn't live up to his parents' expectations, takes drugs, sleeps late and hangs out. One day, Catherine receives a novel anonymously, which brings to light an embarrassing episode from her past. The sender is the retired teacher Stephen Brigstocke (Kevin Kline), who has found the manuscript among his deceased wife's papers. In a parallel narrative, we see a teenage couple travelling through Europe without being able to place them.
Cuarón cuts the various storylines against each other without making it immediately clear how they are connected. He jumps back and forth chronologically between the present and the past. For a long time, we don't know what the anonymous novel is actually about, we only see Stephen inconspicuously placing the book with Catherine's husband, her son and her colleagues. The effect is devastating and threatens to destroy Catherine's life.
Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline are brilliant in the leading roles and it's a pleasure to watch as they head towards a showdown. Cuarón elegantly makes use of a voice-over, sometimes in the first, sometimes in the third person. ‘We should think about how we perceive ourselves and others,’ says Cuarón. This is precisely what the film is playing with in a sophisticated way, namely our perception and what we believe to be the supposed truth.
The writer and director Rodrigo Sorogoyen is considered one of the most interesting directors in contemporary Spanish cinema. His last film ‘As Bestas - Like Wild Animals’ (2022) was an international success after its premiere in Cannes and won nine Spanish film awards. Series are nothing new for him; in 2020 he shot the award-winning police series ‘Antidisturbios’. In Venice, Sorogoyen presented ‘Los Años Nuevos’, 10 chapters, each set one year apart on New Year's Eve.
Ana and Oscár are 30 years old when they meet at a New Year's Eve party. Neither of them are happy with their lives. Ana (Iria del Río) works in a bar and has a job lined up in Scotland, while Oscár (Francesco Carril) is working stressful shifts as an emergency room doctor. A year later, we see Oscár returning to his former girlfriend and Ana with a new boyfriend. In a later chapter, the two get together again and become a couple. Oscár is extremely suspicious, Ana is more open and less inhibited. Time and again, this leads to heated arguments. A trip to Berlin and a night out in a Berghain-style club mark the end of their relationship. But it's not the end of the story.
Although nothing dramatic happens, it is exciting to watch how the characters grow older, how they change and how they find their way in life. ‘We wanted to make a series about normal life, in which the characters talk like we do... about the little things in life that move us, interest us and amuse us,’ said Sorogoyen in Venice.
The style of his production is anything but conventional. Many scenes are shot in long takes where the actors perform authentically and intensely. Despite the film's length of seven and a half hours, you follow their story spellbound to the end.
Benito Mussolini, originally editor-in-chief of a socialist newspaper, became a fervent nationalist during the First World War and the founder of fascism in the 1920s. His political movement, as radical as it was modern, was to shape Europe in the 20th century. Without Mussolini there would have been no Hitler, without Italian fascism there would have been no German National Socialism. Mussolini was not only the role model for the radical right-wing movements of the 1920s and 1930s, his influence continues to have an impact to this day. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni comes from the neo-fascist youth, even if she likes to disguise her ideological origins in a patriotic manner.
In his documentary novel ‘M. Il Figlio del Secolo’ (M. The Son of the Century, 2018), Antonio Scurati, a literature professor at the University of Milan, traced Mussolini's rise from political journalist to fascist dictator in the years following the First World War.
Now the English director Joe Wright has turned this complex historical panorama into a film. Wright avoids the pitfalls of conventional historical films and opts for a radically artificial approach. His eight-part series looks like a surreal piece of theatre. Much of the action takes place in the semi-darkness of a backdrop setting. Mussolini regularly addresses the audience directly, much like the characters in Shakespeare's plays.
The young Italian star Luca Marinelli is hardly recognisable in the title role. He captures Mussolini's gestures and mannerisms without caricaturing his original role model. ‘I come from an anti-fascist family and the hardest thing for me was to overcome my aversion to the figure of Mussolini,’ said Marinelli in Venice. The way in which the film traces the rise of fascism is something of a didactic play. Mussolini provides the historical model for how to first utilise the mechanisms of parliamentary democracy and, once in power, abolish them once and for all.
While longer series that extend over several seasons primarily fulfil a sense of recognition, shorter series such as those mentioned above have a more focused storyline. They allow filmmakers to tell an epic story, but not an excessive one. They are no alternative to cinema, but a creative addition for viewers with patience and stamina.
