Leopardi

A film about a poet, set in nineteenth century Italy. Giacomo grows up in Recanati. His father has built a great library and educates his children at home; going outside is nearly forbidden. Giacomo is in that library from the age of seven. He learns Greek, Latin and Hebrew and spends his youth among books. His body pays for it. His spine curves, his eyes fail, and he remains ill for the rest of his life. What he writes gets out. He becomes known through correspondence and finally manages to leave the house. From there the film is a story of wandering. Florence, Rome and finally Naples; in each city a circle, a disappointment and an attack of illness. What the narrative is interested in is not poetry but pessimism: Leopardi argues that nature is indifferent to people, and the film carries that as a thought rather than a mood. There is a cholera epidemic in the Naples section. The poet lives on the slopes of Vesuvius and writes his last long poem there. The final scene is a reading of that poem on the mountainside. The telling is deliberately slow. The camera stays in rooms, the light is limited to candles and windows, and the speech is in the language of the period. Elio Germano plays the part through a large physical transformation and won Best Actor in Italy for it. Elio Germano, Michele Riondino and Massimo Popolizio are in the cast. Mario Martone directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes literary biography and patient Italian cinema. Who it is not for: anyone looking for incident; the film runs over two hours and is almost entirely interior.