Few directors love Italian cinema as much as Pablo Larrain, recognising in an important season of our filmography the value of a personal and universal education that crosses history, culture and memory that made Italy great in the world. Paolo and Vittorio Taviani were aware of this, as they have been closely linked to the Chilean director’s authorial intuitions since his debut. Larrain paid homage since university with a thesis dedicated precisely to the works of the two brothers.
It is no coincidence then that Larrain presents here on the Lido his love for a country that also won him over with its passion for opera. He reminds us with Maria, dedicated to Callas and with a memorable performance by Angelina Jolie, how important it is not to forget that Italian culture is still very significant in the world. Jolie’s Callas is an opportunity to remind us how memory, in cinema but not only, is a value to be preserved and transmitted without the fear of slipping into rhetoric in a story that, beyond the biopic, offers an authentic concert of emotions. It seems Larrain needs to remind us how precious our past is and how vital the cult of memory is. And cinema cannot and must not escape. It is a universal theme also exalted by the attention to the modernity of Giacomo Leopardi in his ‘no hump’ version. The series directed by Sergio Rubini, previewed yesterday in Venice, is more focused on the universal insights of the young poet. And if the rediscovered memory resurfaces in this year’s tribute exhibitions – about Mastroianni and the Venetian godmothers through the years celebrating the beauty of yesterday’s divas – it is also the words of the international stars that fill our eyes with emotion: ‘I will always say thank you to Italian cinema,’ began Sigourney Weaver as she collected the Golden Lion on the opening night, ‘that of Fellini, Antonioni, De Sica. I remember Divorce Italian Style as one of those films that took me to a different world; that is where it all began. Pietro Germi and Marcello Mastroianni, somewhere in the sky, said thank you for sure…
