“The great ambition”: Berlinguer we still love you
“Berlinguer – the great ambition” is the film that opened the nineteenth edition of the Rome Film Festival in competition. The film, directed by Andrea Segre, tells a part of Enrico Berlinguer’s life, to be precise the one enclosed between two fundamental but also seriously mournful historical events: the killing of Salvator Allende on 11 September 1973 and the discovery of Aldo’s body Moro occurred on May 9, 1978.
In the name of the collective good
It was a moment of great popularity for the secretary of the PCI, who at the time led the most important communist party in the West in terms of number of members and consensus in terms of votes. But for Berlinguer that was also a period of great torment, both public and private: on the one hand there were strong tensions with the Moscow party, on the other the fatigue – physical and mental – of carrying the responsibility for unpopular choices taken in the name of the great ambition that gives the film its title. The quote from Antonio Gramsci that kicks off the story is also the heart of the film: “Usually we see the struggle of small ambitions, linked to individual private goals, against great ambition, which is instead indissoluble from the collective good”.
And it is precisely in the name of the collective good that Enrico Berlinguer sacrificed so much in his life, from material goods (as is clarified at a certain point, half of his salary as a Member of Parliament went to the Party), to his health and the time he spent with people. dear. A good portion of Andrea Segre’s film is dedicated to Berlinguer’s fatigue, his little major ailments and his constant tension – which presumably was in the long run the cause of his premature death, the rest is the slavish and sometimes didactic reconstruction of the events that saw him as the protagonist of the political history of those years.
Elio Germano in the role he’s been waiting for all his life
Elio Germano plays the PCI secretary in what is perhaps the role he has been waiting for all his life. The actor has always been very attentive to social issues and often chooses to put his popularity at the service of challenging films such as Palazzina LAF, the film by Michele Riondino which earned him the David di Donatello for best supporting actor. In a certain sense, Germano continues his choice to lend himself to serious cinema by playing Enrico Berlinguer in what will probably be the next acting test that will earn him yet another (and well-deserved) David di Donatello. Germano’s work is impressive not so much and not only in the physical resemblance but in the attention and study of the gestures, the poses, the gaze which reflect the weight of the responsibilities that weighed on Berlinguer and a certain sense of inadequacy that Berlinguer never had hidden. The actor evidently put his all into the role not only and not so much for the film, but aware of the political responsibility of giving his body and his voice to one of the most beloved people in the history of our country.
Luigi Manconi, husband of Bianca Berlinguer: “Blind for a year, I no longer see the faces of my children”
Pros and cons
Segre’s film alternates archive material with “fictional” images in many moments, trying to create a sort of continuity between the story of the film and actual history. For the director, the search for repertoires – and therefore the construction of the dialogue between reality and fiction – was perhaps the most ambitious creative and productive challenge of the film; for this important part of the story (the director and screenwriter say they were inspired by Milk by Gus Van Sant). In addition to the great work of the archivists, great attention was given to make-up and photography; The soundtrack of Io sono un cane also deserves a special mention, embellishing the film with contemporary and never banal musical accompaniment.
Berlinguer – the great ambition, is a film that has in mind the audience it wants to speak to: on the one hand there are obviously those nostalgic for the PCI, on the other, however, there is the younger audience who grew up with the stories of fathers, uncles, grandparents and who in recent years has shown great interest and curiosity in recent history, perhaps precisely because it is a historical period that is difficult to study in school curricula.
The pace of the film sometimes drops and the writings with the names of the characters add nothing to the economy of the story, on the contrary, they risk distracting the viewer; furthermore, the supporting performances are not always up to that of Germano and perhaps the casting of the boys who play Berlinguer’s daughters and son would have deserved more attention. Despite its defects, Segre’s film remains extremely respectful of the subject matter it deals with and this is evident in every aspect of the staging.
Berlinguer’s tomb desecrated, his children: “It is not the act of a deranged person but a political gesture”
Like There’s Still Tomorrow
Last year the Rome Film Festival opened with There’s Still Tomorrow by Paola Cortellesi, a film that shares with The Great Ambition the desire to talk about the present starting from the past. Like Cortellesi’s film, Segre’s also ends with images of a historical event, that of Berlinguer’s funeral. It was impossible not to be moved by the crowd gathered in Piazza San Giovanni to mourn together not only a comrade, but also the end of the great ambition which was not only his, but that of an entire people. And it is impossible not to be moved by the group of artists of our cinema – Fellini, Dino Risi, Mastroianni, Ettore Scola, Monica Vitti – who chose to pay homage to Berlinguer by participating in his funeral wake. Segre has given his film a clear direction and it will certainly find favor with the public. Berlinguer – the great ambition, will be released on October 31st distributed by Lucky Red. Who knows, perhaps the choice to go to the theater on Halloween night is intended to send a message: the specter of communism still haunts Europe and perhaps that guy was right when he said that we are and will always be poor communists. Especially poor.
Rating: 7