Nanni Moretti (Brunico, 1953) He is angry and, as they would say on Twitter, it doesn’t matter when you read this sentence. Anger is not, in his case, a simple character trait but a physical one. The director is tall, lanky and furious at first. Like Ariosto’s Orlando, but his anger is not necessarily due to a snubbed love – which perhaps also – nor is his anger made explicit by uprooting trees from their roots. In his case, it is enough for him to reproach the journalist (seriously, of course) for not asking the right question. The star moment of his anger is reserved for when he is questioned about the moment in his latest film in which he himself, in the role of a veteran film director, reproaches a younger colleague for his way of filming an act of violence. . «No, Christ! It’s just fiction. “I don’t go through life giving lessons to anyone,” he says (or shouts), he gets up, walks around and we won’t say that he gets angry, because, in truth, he was already angry. His anger is there. Always.
The sun of the future It is the reason for all of the above. This is the title of his latest film, which, in truth, and since its premiere in Italy last spring, should be a reason for anything but sulking. As soon as it landed on the billboard, it became a success rarely seen before in his filmography (that week it was only surpassed by Super Mario Bros). His visit to the Cannes Festival, where the meeting took place, ended with an avalanche of congratulations accompanied by the shared feeling of witnessing the best and most recognizable version of the director of Expensive daily, of which this film is, in some way, a mirror and even a culmination.
«I want to think that with this film I close the first phase of my career. It’s been 50 years [acaba de cumplir los 70] of cinema and now many more are beginning,” he says to justify the obvious rhyme between the film of now and the one of then. The sun of the future (ironic title based on a partisan song) tells the story of a film director determined to make a musical set in Rome in 1956 at the time when Soviet tanks broke into Budapest and the Italian Communist Party (peaches, for the castizos) was the only one in all of Europe to support the Hungarian insurrection. Logically, no one is interested in the project, the French producer goes crazy and Netflix comes to the rescue. We talk about the movie within the movie.
“The original idea was to set the film in 1956. But there was no way to find the key and from there came the idea, common in my cinema, of incorporating the point of view, the film within the film,” he clarifies. And why 1956? «For the simple reason that that was a unique opportunity for the Western left to free itself from dependence on the Soviet Union. It was, without a doubt, a missed opportunity,” reasons a man whose credit includes not only a documentary on the PCI made in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, but a constant concern that left-wing politicians say and do wrong things. left (memorable moment in April). «The right in the government now with Meloni does right-wing things. And they behave like what it is. The left, however, does not. “It is difficult for the left to do left-wing things… Therefore, a few years in the opposition may be good for them to rebuild their identity.” And what would that identity consist of? «In recent years in Italy, the left has been in government without having won the elections and has given the impression of being just another party of power. That is, and as he said, has lost his identity, which, basically, is being on the side of the last, the weakest,” he says, stops and requests (better, demands) to stop talking about politics.
– Shall we talk about Netflix?