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Crazy
in love: Mezzogiorno in Vincere.
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Unconquered
By
Laura Leon
Vincere
Directed
by Marco Bellocchio
Watching Vincere, it’s impos-sible to relax and just let the
images and dialogue roll over you. No, one is forced to witness
astonishing acts of depravity and obsession, and personal
degradation and martyrdom, often while being bombarded by
an operatic soundtrack. Screeching captions like “Guerra!
Guerra! Guerra!” come at you like a shot off of Albert Pujols’
bat.
One can’t help but wonder, is this for real? Based on the
true story of the pre-Il Duce Benito Mussolini’s fateful relationship
with Ida Dalser and his eventual rise thereof, it certainly
is, even if director Marco Bellocchio keeps some details to
himself and allows us the opportunity to wonder about others.
The movie opens with Mussolini (Filippo Timi) mesmerizing
an assembled crowd with his assertion that, if God truly exists,
he would strike the then-socialist-atheist political agitator
dead within five minutes. As the clock ticks, the camera scans
to the back of the room, where young Ida (Giovanna Mezzogiorno)
watches in rapt, feline fascination. “Time’s up! God does
not exist!” proclaims Mussolini, to which the crowd erupts
in rage and confusion. Later, with soldiers hot on his trail,
he takes refuge behind a stone wall, where he happens to find
Ida, and the two give way to a passionate kiss before he disappears
in the night.
Flash forward seven years (the movie dips back and forth in
time, to a sometimes maddening extent), and Ida, now a boutique
owner, spies Mussolini heading up a protest march. As the
event dissolves into a melee, she runs out and slips him a
note and an embrace. Later, he comes back to her, and the
resulting coupling is a true act a la the title, which is
Italian for “to win by vanquishing.” Ida’s love for the rising
politician is incandescent. She sells all her belongings to
provide him the capital he needs to begin a new political
newspaper. She joyfully has his namesake, a baby he formally
recognized in January 1916, and then is basically shunted
to the corner of history—except for the fact that she won’t
shut up.
As the movie progresses, we see less of Timi’s Mussolini,
and more of the easy-to-mock figurehead recognizable to anyone
who has seen an old Hollywood newsreel. Ida is left alone
and impoverished. She writes letters to anyone in authority
begging for assistance in compelling Mussolini to honor the
marriage vows she swears were exchanged; in an interesting
historical mystery, said documentation went missing concomitant
with Il Duce’s rise to power. Meanwhile, he married another,
with whom he had five children. Ida’s son is taken from her,
his upbringing entrusted to one of Mussolini’s minions, and
she is sent to a mental asylum. For years she implores the
nuns to help her escape to see her child. While at times one
can’t help but think, hey, Ida, get over the jerk, one is
also held hostage by the very real drama of a lone woman fighting
for her scrap of humanity. At the same time, Ida’s constant
protestations of her truth (even a sympathetic psychiatrist
advises her to pretend to make nice, in order to see her son
again) evidence a myopia, akin to that of Mussolini, to a
greater reality.
Vincere owes much to the sweeping melodramas of D.W. Griffith
and later David O. Selznick. Indeed, Mezzogiorno channels
Mary Pickford and Helen Hayes (this is a compliment) in her
fight to retain some semblance of humanity. Mezzogiorno’s
is a tricky role, as her obstinate struggle for legitimacy
veers on the sociopathic, but she somehow manages to keep
us on Ida’s side. Similarly, Timi manages to make us believe
that one of the world’s worst tyrants may have once possessed
a magnetism that we ourselves may have fallen sway to. As
he makes love to Ida for the first time, he seems to be intellectually
worlds away, pondering dominance over something greater; post-coitus,
he wanders naked to the balcony, where he envisions thousands
of adoring Italians. Clearly, his eye is on a much different
prize than that of Ida; Vincere bears witness to the eventual
downfall of both visions.
Tarantino
Babies
Kick-Ass
Directed
by Matthew Vaughn
The comic book on which the movie Kick-Ass is based was as
much, or more, a satire as it was a superhero story. Co-creators
Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. devised the most pedestrian
origin story imaginable for a superhero: Lonely teen fanboy
simply decides to become a costumed vigilante. No lighting
flash in the lab, no radioactive infection, no genetic mutation,
no masochistic rituals of training and no great tragedy to
avenge. Just an average comic-book reader—lonely, awkward,
a bit earnest and a lot naďve—seeking to transform and distinguish
himself. The introduction of that character into something
very closely resembling the “real world” resulted in fun and
funny commentary on the excesses and oddities of the superheroic
world as more commonly presented.
Over the course of the original eight issues, Kick-Ass combined
ironic, generic self-awareness and graphic action for an effect
that might be called comic-book Quentin. As Tarantino plays
daredevil with the conventions of film, Millar and Romita
goofed with the stock material of the superhero form: Without
spoiling the series for anyone who wants to backtrack to the
books, it must be said that the storyline is absolutely riveted
to and dependent upon the concept of fanboy identification
with the medium as a force unto itself. Kick-Ass, the comic,
is a comic about the love of comics.
For a variety of reasons—finances, no doubt, not least among
them—that conceptual tenet has been mitigated in the film.
Instead, screenwriter Jane Goldman and screenwriter-director
Matthew Vaughn have chosen to adopt a more “filmic” approach.
A significant character’s backstory has been wholly reversed,
to be more in keeping with the traditional motivations of
action dramas. And there’s the rub. For me, anyway.
There is much to like about Kick-Ass, the movie. Aaron Johnson
as our aspiring hero, Dave Lizewski/Kick-Ass, is tolerable
on his own, and better than that in the company of his loser
friends, Marty (Clark Duke) and Todd (Evan Peters). The dynamic
among these three is a high point, more truly representing
the half-smart banter and idiocy of teen male interaction
than most movies. Though rarely laugh-out-loud funny, Kick-Ass
has lots of amusing moments. And the action is, not to belabor
a comparison, highly indebted to Tarantino, and those he ably
boosts from—which is a compliment.
But while I want to praise the filmmakers for honoring the
medium in which they were working and not being slavishly
devoted to the source material, something was lacking in the
onscreen Kick-Ass. As a comic, it was a bit insidery, true.
But without that connection to its original spirit, and with
the changes made to—one assumes—broaden audiences, something
essential is lost. What’s left is an intensely violent—if
fun—film starring surprisingly young people. What’s left feels
something like a Tarantino production of Bugsy Malone. With
capes.
—John
Rodat
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