By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 26, 2006
CANNES, France -- Nanni Moretti is as bliss-buzzed as can be, a smiling pogo stick -- up, down, up, down -- dancing with his film friends, his cast and crew, his fellow left-wingers. Happy days for the lefties Italiano! They're jammed cheek-to-cheek and partying like fools into the early morning under giant white tents on the beach, slugging down the politically incorrect Chivas Regal (elixir of the oligarchy!), the whole place bouncing to the DJ's long-play of the Clash's "Rock the Casbah."
They have reason to celebrate. Moretti, one of Italy's most prominent directors and also an actor, is back at Cannes with his new film, "Il Caimano" (The Crocodile), which is in competition here, a contender for top honors. The movie was released in March in Italy, where it was a big box office draw -- and as controversial as a Michael Moore documentary.
The subject of his fictional but fact-based fare was the bleach-toothed crocodile himself, Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire (richest man in Italy) media and sports tycoon (he owns three national TV stations and the AC Milan soccer team) and former prime minister of Italy, who closely aligned himself with President Bush, sending Italian troops to Iraq and such.
A month after Moretti's film came out, Berlusconi and his right-center coalition were defeated by the slimmest of margins by the left-center, which just formed the new government headed by Romano Prodi.
Did the film tip the point? Did it energize the left? Or the right?
Italian politics, whew, is like a college term paper, with its coalitions, leagues, alliances and endless debates about who is a neo-fascist and what is a neo-communist, etc., and the governments fall and fail and are rebuilt, over and over.
But think of it this way: Nanni Moretti is Barbra Streisand. Or George Clooney. Just as in the United States, where spokesmen for the left and the Democrats for whatever reason are often Hollywood stars, this is the role that Moretti plays in Italy.
Actually, it's a role he plays along with Roberto Benigni -- the manic comedic actor known to Americans as the guy who accepted his Oscar for "Life Is Beautiful" in 1998 by climbing over the seats -- the other face of Berlusconi opposition.
Asked by a reporter in March whether he planned on seeing "Il Caimano," Berlusconi replied, "Absolutely not."
But in Cannes, the film is being applauded. We tracked Moretti down earlier this week for an interview, which we were told by a publicist was a relative privilege, as Moretti is not giving a lot of interviews, which we thought odd, since the entire point of the Cannes festival is the relentless commercial promotion of movies.
In person, Moretti, 52, is no clown, no Roberto Benigni. He sits, static, in a blue knit polo shirt and white linen pants, sipping a cappuccino, speaking Italian as a female interpreter translates. He is precise in his responses, somewhat didactic, the poli-sci professor. No cracking of jokes, no flamboyant hand gestures (which is surprising, as his movie -- forget the politics -- is funny in many moments).
The film, which doesn't have a U.S. distributor, is really a movie within a movie, about a sad-sack producer named Bruno (Silvio Orlando) whose business is about to go belly-up until a script is handed to him one day by a young first-time director (Jasmine Trinca) who wants to tell the story of Berlusconi's rise to power. The former prime minister is portrayed as a scheming, vain, bombastic heavy who, the film suggests, got into politics to escape bankruptcy and court proceedings.
In the movie, one of the characters says that the Italians have "lost our brains."
What does the director mean?
Moretti points out that in the 1970s, Italy had two national state-run channels, "the gray channels." Berlusconi revolutionized media with his creation of three new commercial channels, which had dancing girls and lots of sports, soap operas and all the rest.
"So one must say because of television we got used to dealing with characters who are really violent and mediocre and not someone we would talk to in real life," Moretti says.
Hmm. Has he ever watched any American TV?
"No."
Berlusconi served two terms as prime minister, most recently from 2001 to 2006, the longest stint in the Italian republic's history. He looms gigantic on the Italian political landscape, with a gazillion exposés and articles about him and his very complex financial dealings (and bribery/corruption trial that went on for years). So there have probably been plenty of films about this larger-than-life character, no?
"No," Moretti says. "This is the first."
That is a surprise.
"If you ask me why nobody ever made a movie about him, I have reasons for that. The first one is that the Italian reality is so amazing it is hard for the imagination to follow it. A second reason is if you want to make a movie, the funding comes from television, and in Italy it's either RAI or Berlusconi's channels, so they might not be interested in such a movie. And finally, I don't like to talk about censorship, but I think many directors or actors censor themselves. They didn't even try to do it all these years."
"Il Caimano" is clearly very anti-Berlusconi (digs at his hair plugs, plastic surgery, strong-man tactics), though it is also a commentary about the Italian condition and includes lines about how sad the left is.
What was the reaction to the film?
"Before the movie was released, there was an absurd debate between journalists and politicians about my movie, which nobody had seen," Moretti says. "Strangely enough, everybody thought I had made a propaganda movie. And I just let them talk. Because I knew when they saw it, it would not be the movie they expected."
It was attacked?
Moretti chortles theatrically. He eyes us. Are we a fool?
"Right-wingers attacked it. Yes. Some right-wingers called me a Nazi Maoist."
Very Italian.
He continues, telling how a political staffer had "written this manifesto against me, for the politician was himself a former left-left-winger. But without being moralist, that is a real Italian phenomenon. Many people in many countries change their minds. But in Italy we have a lot of them, in quantity and quality, who went from the left to the right."
Does he think the movie changed the outcome of the election?
Moretti is not sure.
But he is glad how things worked out? His movie at Cannes, Berlusconi out.
Moretti raises an eyebrow and shrugs. He appears happier. But not necessarily happy.
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