A Pirandello very far from what we have learned to know through school textbooks, a man with a complex and not at all easy life, who experienced suffering, failures and inadequacies before reaching the peak of an extraordinary career already in life (a fortune which many other greats did not have), with the recognition of the Nobel Prize in 1934. This is the figure at the center of Michele Placido’s new film, Eterno Visionario, in cinemas from 7 November.

Fabrizio Bentivoglio embodies the great author, while his muse, and young love experienced as forbidden by the master, Marta Abba, is played by Federica Luna Vincenti, also the film’s producer. Embodying the figure of Pirandello’s mad and finally interned wife, Antonietta Portulano, is Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, while the three children, stuck in the storms of this family are: Aurora Giovinazzo in the role of Lietta, Giancarlo Commare in that of Stefano and Michelangelo Placido in those of Fausto.

Eternal Visionary, the plot

At the beginning of the film Eternal Visionary, the viewer finds Pirandello, now elderly, on board a train, leaving Hamburg in the direction of Stockholm, where the writer is expected to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. It is November 8, 1934, exactly 90 years ago. During the journey, the author reflects on the years that preceded this moment, thinking back to his works, his characters, but above all the difficulties of a man, husband, father, the roller coaster of a life not without difficulties in which not always he was equal to the situations that faced him, but in which writing and theater have always been a constant relief valve, moreover, a lifeline and a necessary filter for the harshness of reality and finally a tool for one’s artistic creation.

We therefore enter, with the writer’s memories, into the Pirandello house, where the destabilizing presence of a wife suffering from psychiatric disorders profoundly marks the life of a family with an adult son at the front and the two minors, a boy and a girl, immersed in a a reality that seems to have no way out. A way out that the father instead finds, complete and satisfying, in his creative world, in writing and in meeting characters, full of all the paradoxes and distortions of human existence.

And along with the nights of writing, salvation (and escape) for Pirandello is in the long hours of rehearsals and work at the theater, where he meets his muse, the actress Marta Abba, too young to allow himself to love her the way he does. would like, but with which he knows the great success and appreciation for his work. The years pass, there is no shortage of complications, the wife is interned, the children accuse Pirandello of what he already knows, that he was not an adequate father, and the frustrated desire for Marta continues to generate frustration and creativity at the same time .

A film that restores to the figure of Pirandello the human complexity in which his work is based

An in-depth investigation into the soul of a genius. This is essentially Eterno Visionario, the film by Michele Placido that delves into the life of the man Pirandello to trace, in his painful and eventful biography, the expensive seeds of his work as an author, finally consecrated with the greatest possible recognition: the prize Nobel. It is precisely at the moment of greatest success that we find the writer, elderly, on a night train journey across Europe, alone to deal with himself.

A frank, ruthless assessment that takes into account all the shortcomings and inadequacies of a life that has had no discounts but has also found a way to record the positive sign, thanks to creative flair and the gift of knowing how to transfer all the imperfection of humanity in a blank page and in characters of a drama or comedy. Sincerity is precisely what Pirandello cares most about, according to what we hear from his passionate speech at the Stockholm Academy.

A sincerity that we also find in this film, which does not fall into the temptation to sugarcoat the figure of a giant of our culture, but goes with a decisive but empathetic touch to dig into every corner of his life, giving the viewer a rich story, complex and unpublished by the great author, of which a fundamental part is also the beautiful interpretation of Fabrizio Bentivoglio.

Rating: 7