‘Our bonds are private. Some things must stay between us’: Paolo Sorrentino and Toni Servillo talk about smoking, cinema and secrets | film

‘T“Hey, I like smoking,” the publicist said before my interview with Paolo Sorrentino and Tony Cervillo. That’s why the table and chairs were hastily dragged outside. That is why today’s audience will be held outdoors. We are on a narrow balcony on the sixth floor of a hotel in Venice, overlooking the sea, under a dark cloud of dark clouds. The publicist points to my tape recorder and asks, “Is it going to catch what they’re saying, or is it just going to catch what they’re saying?” Wind noise?

They like to smoke – of course they do. The Italian director and his muse are both men of old Europe: impassive, polite, quiet and unconventional; Generous at the heart and a little rough around the edges. They took seven photos together and are desperately hoping to make an eighth. But who can predict? Even the best laid plans can bring about a successful outcome. Sorrentino and Cervelo know that time is limited and that the old, reassuring order is slipping into the past. They had barely put out their cigars before the rain fell aside. We stayed for a couple of minutes on the balcony and then returned to the table inside.

“The horizon is approaching,” says the Pope, addressing the hero of Sorrentino’s new film, “La Grazia.” It is an elegant, elegiac drama about a statesman’s last six months in office. Cervello plays Mariano De Santis, the outgoing President of the Italian Republic, who faces a series of moral and ethical choices. DeSantis isn’t perfect. He is cautious and deliberate to the point of hesitation. He struggles to reconcile his Catholic faith with his legal training. But he is a dedicated government employee, perhaps the last of his kind. There’s one more bill to sign and then it’s over: it’s over – and what follows in its footsteps is anyone’s guess.

Sorrentino insists it is not a political film. Yes, it’s about a man who works in politics, but he could have worked in finance, or the automobile industry. A straightforward political film that would have bored him to tears. What’s interesting, he says, is the relationship between private life and public service, the ways in which one can influence the other, and whether that’s healthy or not. He recently watched a prophetic interview in 2011 with American businessman Charlie Munger, who warned of the possibility of Donald Trump reaching the presidency. “Munger said this was a terrifying and unthinkable idea,” he recalls. “He said that if a man so arrogant — a man so greedy and so eager for glory — became president, it would do great and lasting damage to the world.”

Servillo nodded. In an earlier era, he says, DeSantis might have been seen as the gray man of politics: sober, rational, and fundamentally unexciting. Today, these qualities are what qualify him to be a hero. This reminds Servillo of a line from Bertolt Brecht’s play The Life of Galileo: “‘Unhappy is the land that breeds no heroes,’ says one character. ‘Unhappy is the land that breeds no heroes,’ says the other. ‘Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.'” He pours himself a cup of water, studying it blankly for a spell. An assistant comes in with a bag of sodium bicarbonate.

Cervelo was an established stage actor, already in his 40s, when Sorrentino cast him to play a fading club singer in One Man Up in 2001. “At the time I was working on Molière’s The Misanthrope,” he says. “This annoying kid kept forcing the script on me, and I kept putting it down because I was a very serious theater actor, you see. I had this arrogant, snobbish hatred of cinema.” He sips his water. “So Paolo resorted to a kind of trick. He said: ‘Well, don’t read it, I’ll give it to another actor.’ And that pricked the nerves of my vanity. I immediately sat down and read the text of the annoying child.

The two men came together, even as their best films came out during a spectacular deathmatch. Consequences of Love shed light on the afterlife of a mafia man in limbo. Il Divo charted the perilous retribution of Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti. The biggest and brightest film of all was the Oscar-winning The Great Beauty, a Roman bonfire of vanity that cast Servillo in the role of Jeb Gambardella, the now “King of High Life” on the slide. Cervelo says that when he thinks back on his career accomplishments — the Oscars; For the first time at the Cannes and Venice Film Festivals – Sorrentino was always by his side.

The actor is 67 years old and the director is 55 years old. But they could be cousins ​​or siblings; They share the same cultural background. “The fact that we come from Naples has a big influence,” says Cervelo. “But there are other, more personal reasons why we have this strong connection. It is very touching and not easy to explain. It is something special between us.”

Look at Sorrentino. The manager shakes his head. “I have nothing to add,” he says frankly. “I mean I know what he’s talking about. But there are some things that need to stay between us.”

The rain has eased now. The wind seems to be decreasing. Sorrentino thinks about his cigar and reworks his business plan. Is it worth risking the balcony and braving the elements, or waiting another half hour and hoping for blue skies? “We are waiting,” he announces, sounding like Napoleon in his tent.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, La Grazia is Sorrentino’s most satisfying film since 2013’s The Great Beauty. The director tends to work best when his mood is tart and reflective; When he seems to view the world as a sumptuous wedding cake smashed by the rain. It is less successful when it is sunny; When he’s concocting sentimental showbiz like “Hand of God” and “Parthenope,” or grappling playfully with English-language productions. He cast Sean Penn as a goth rocker in 2011’s This Should Be the Place; He sent Michael Caine into the Alps in the youth of 2015. He now views both films as an experiment – ​​and perhaps not much more than that.

“Language itself was not a barrier at all,” he says. “My English isn’t fluent, but that’s okay. I rely more on the music of the actor’s voice than on my understanding of the text. But I was really moved by a quote from Philip Roth, a writer I adore. He said that you have to know the culture of a place deep down, deep down, and only then will you have the ability to tell the story of that world. And that’s right. He’s right. He made my decision for me. And that stopped my desire to tell different stories. In another country.”

“The past is a burden and the future is a void,” says the anguished Papa La Grazia, as the heroic old president prepares to leave the stage. It has come, De Santis says, to the point where he simply longs to return home and be with his books and his family, perhaps in that order. Sorrentino often feels the same way. The first part of a career is about arrival, he says. It’s about showing up, showing off, and trying to make the world stand up and take notice. But the second half has one foot in the departure lounge. You’re already thinking about your heritage; You want to make a graceful exit. And the business changes under your leadership, whether you want it to or not. The playground is no longer what it was in your youth.

“Yes, I’m thinking about getting out,” Sorrentino says. “The world of cinema has changed. And I like making movies less and less. But maybe I’m just saying that to fool myself. Maybe I need to think I’m about to quit this job in order to motivate myself to delve into it more fully.”

It’s a complex case. Man is a creature of desires. He is exhausted but greedy. He’s full but hungry. “The film industry is similar to my relationship with food,” he says. “I’m trying to go on a diet, but if they showed me a completely arranged table, I would immediately want to taste everything on it. It’s the same with the cinema. In theory, I’m no longer interested. But show me the table and I’ll devour every dish.”

I pressed the wrong button after the interview was over and the elevator took me from the sky lounge, through the lobby to the basement, where large double doors opened onto the beach. It seems I’ve just left Sorrentino and Cervelo upstairs, and yet they must have moved like greased lightning, because they’re already on the sand, sauntering past the beach huts like a pair of old loafers. The waves are crashing and it’s still raining, but these men have waited long enough. They put their backs to the wind and sent out twin columns of white smoke.