La Grazia

 Paolo Sorrentino's new film, La Grazia (2025) concerns a man on the brink of old age taking stock of his life.  This situation (it doesn't amount to a narrative) is amplified into consequence by the fact that the movie's protagonist is the President of Italy.  The irony explored by the film is that its famous and successful hero, who seems almost universally beloved, has come to doubt his achievements -- in fact, he wonders whether he has accomplished anything useful at all.  Some elderly men afflicted by this doubt might arrange to sit down with their pastors for a philosophical chat; President de Santis, the film's hero, has a collegial conversation with the Pope, an African with grey dreadlocks and a snazzy motorcycle.  The Pope turns out to be not much help:  "You have no future," Pope bluntly tells the President.  The Pope also diagnoses the President's problem:  "You must make yourself light."  The President has only a few months left in his regime -- he has been in the lavish Quirinal Palace (the President's residency) for seven years. But there are a number of things weighing him down, resisting the Pope's injunction to be more "light":  among the affairs of State, there are two pardons testing the limits of the criminal law -- an abused woman has stabbed her husband while he was sleeping 18 times but claims his mistreatment justified the act; a high school teacher who has resigned his position to care for his wife with Alzheimer's is the subject of a pardon petition made by his ex-students:  the teacher suffocated his wife claiming that this was euthanasia justified by the woman's violent rages and anger.  Adding to his burdens, the President is considering a law authorizing euthanasia in certain circumstances, a politically risky enactment that is strongly opposed by the Pope and his Church.  The President's relationship with his daughter, herself a renowned jurist, is suffering due to his vacillation as to the euthanasia bill -- she acts as the President's closest advisor and is one of the drafters of the bill. (If I sign the bill, the protagonists says, I'm a murderer; if I don't, I'm a torturer./ The President's son lives in Montreal where he produces pop music, neglecting his vocation as a classical composer.  To add to his misery, the President's horse, Elvis, is slowly dying -- and the President is unable to give the order to put the horse out of its misery; this reluctance mirrors his hesitation at signing the euthanasia bill into law.  Further, the President is mourning the loss of his wife, the love of his life, eight years earlier.  Complicating his mourning is his knowledge to an absolute certainty that his wife was unfaithful to him at the start of their forty year marriage.  The President who declares himself as a famous Judge to be an absolute advocate of the truth wants to know the identity of the man who cuckolded him -- he's still prone to undignified jealous rages.  And the poor fellow is hungry all the time:  his daughter has put him on a diet of quinoa and broiled chicken breast -- no pasta for him.  Cigarettes have been banned but he bums them off the cuirassier, his bodyguard and confidante.  President de Santis has written a two-thousand plus page treatise on the criminal law (no one can get through the text which is apparently incredibly detailed and exhaustive.)  The only thing he seems to like is rap music -- he listens on ear-buds and memorizes some of the lyrics.

The film, although visually extravagant, is simple enough.  In the course of the two hour picture, the President will issue a pardon to one of the two convicts serving time, his horse dies, his daughter leaves Rome to visit her brother in Montreal and is off-stage when the President's term ends; the President will sign the bill authorizing euthanasia, and will discover the secret about his wife's affair.  He will take the advice of the Pope and imagine himself as very light, as weightless in fact.  Most of the movie's principle conflicts will be resolved and, in effect, all will be well -- it's all somewhat predictable and sentimental but moving as well:  despite his unhealthy obsession with his wife's adultery, President de Santis is a decent man, a good and fair judge, and a politician whose self-sacrifice has saved the Republic -- at least, this is what people claim when de Santis goes to La Scala and is acclaimed by the other operagoers as a hero.  Sorrentino's picture is quiet and self-restrained -- it's a rare thing, an attempt to explore the life of a man who is virtuous and, what's more, a politician.  The movie contains a number of spectacular images and set pieces; it's lush with interiors full of ancient books and huge marble statues.  It's Rome and everything is outsized, larger than life including the lavish rooms in the Quirinale Palace.  All of the episodes are discrete, chapters in a book that seem set off from one another, but they are carefully configured to echo and resonate with one another.  The President's fear of aging and the feebleness of old age is embodied in a scene in which the Prime Minister of Portugal comes for a state visit -- they've rolled out the red carpet but a sudden squall with rain uproots the carpet and blows it around so that the old, feeble ruler ends up on the ground.  Rain falls in torrents. The imagery is slowed to a nightmare stagger:  "Am I as old as he is?" the President wonders.  In another scene that develops the idea of the "lightness of being" (to quote the Milan Kundera novel), the President watches an astronaut at a space station -- the sound is disabled and video has failed so the astronaut can not see the President.  He sheds a tear  and, then, laughs at the tear which floats in the air like a small quicksilver planet.  The President's daughter goes to visit Isa Rocca who stabbed her husband while he was asleep.  The woman is beautiful and transfixes the lawyer with a steely intimidating stare -- her eyes seem to spark with electricity.  Later the President goes out to the same prison where he insists on sitting in the waiting room with the hard-bitten family members of convicts.  He interviews the ascetic school teacher whom he concludes to be fundamentally dishonest about his own motives. After bidding farewell to his staff (his social calendar secretary, a handsome woman, seems to be in love with him), the President walks back to his apartment overlooking the Spanish Stairs -- since his daughter is gone to Montreal and not controlling his diet, he orders a pizza for his first night at home alone.  In a video face-time session, he talks to his son and daughter.  It's a warm conversation but I don't think it restores the rift between parent and child.  The president finds out who cuckolded him but, as one would expect, that information doesn't make any sense.  Make sure, you stay for a final scene embedded in the credits.  The President has an old friend, Coco, who is fashionista and art collector -- although paradoxically she's proclaimed that she wants to burn all the museums.  Coca is a plump matron who wears huge round glasses and she is impulsive, outspoken, and amusing; she's flamboyantly selfish -- when she sees what is on offer at a dinner party with the President (it's quinoa and broiled  white fish served in tiny portions) she excuses herself and says that she will go out to some place for a better meal.  In the last scene, Coco is slurping her soup while the President, seated before his own bowl of soup, glares at her with disturbing and utter hatred.  "Get off my fucking back!" Coco says, an imprecation that seems to soothe the ex-President.  

I liked this movie and, of course, enjoyed its stunning photography and locations, as well as the dense, aphoristic chatter.  But, I think, it adds up to less than the sum of its parts.  It's a jigsaw and a movie that is ceaselessly clever in articulating its themes and crafting episodes that embody and challenge those themes.  But it also feels somewhat inorganic and schematic -- Sorrentino can exhaust you with all the heavy lifting required to stitch this non-narrative into a discourse on old age, suffering,and friendship -- these are worthy subjects but, also, a bit confining.  The movie never really opens up to let the fresh air in.  Toni Servillo, Sorrentino's surrogate as an actor, is astonishing as the President.  There's a sleek and inquisitive-looking robot dog that leads the procession from the Quirinal Palace to the Spanish Stairs - it's some kind of anti-terrorism weapon but elegant as whippet or Norwegian elkhound.