Strangeness

In 1920 Luigi Pirandello returns to Sicily for the birthday of his friend Giovanni Verga. There he meets two gravediggers who spend their spare time on amateur theatre and are trying to stage a play of their own. Out of these two men the writer finds a way through his own blockage. Roberto Andò builds it as a story of creation, a fictional answer to where Six Characters in Search of an Author might have come from. Its best quality is holding high literature and provincial amateurism in the same frame at equal weight. Toni Servillo plays Pirandello, and the gravediggers are Ficarra and Picone, familiar in Italy as a comedy double act. The film won four David di Donatello awards including best original screenplay. The demand it makes is prior knowledge. For a viewer who does not know Pirandello or that play, whole passages go unanswered. Who it is for: people who like theatre history and films about writing. Who it is not for: anyone unfamiliar with the source.