Benito Mussolini would very much like you to know that he was right. Sure, the opening scene of M. Son of the Century, the frenetic miniseries directed by Joe Wright, includes footage of Il Duce being executed as his fascist regime fell, but he assures us in voiceover that he did everything right. Fortunately for him, he’s got a few hours to tell his side of the story, directly into the camera.
Joe Wright is a maddeningly inconsistent director for me. He made the superior Pride and Prejudice and the consciously theatrical Anna Karenina but his love of excess and exuberance also resulted in Pan. He’s less concerned with meeting his material on an even playing than flinging all of his tricks at the wall to see what sticks. It’s how we got Darkest Hour, written like a bog-standard biopic but shot like a noir musical thriller. So, he cannot help but feel like a curious fit for a miniseries about Italy’s most notorious dictator, shot entirely in a language he doesn’t speak. He certainly shows no sign of reining in his Wright-esque nature, for better or worse.
Luca Marinelli, the Venice Film Festival award-winning actor from Martin Eden and The Old Guard, stars as Mussolini. Petulant, forever pouting like a bulldog, and nowhere near as charming as he believes himself to be, he regularly breaks the fourth wall like Shakespeare’s Richard III to make co-conspirators of his audience. He’s a smart enough strategist to know that the route to power is paved with his own hypocrisies. Fascists oppose elections, but Mussolini knows they must run as candidates anyway because it will legalize their cause. It’s good PR for him to cozy up to Gabriele D’Annunzio, the beloved poet and war hero who led the occupation of Fiume, but there’s no benefit to playing second fiddle to the man. Mussolini himself even admits that he’s become the man he hates through this process of toadying and back-stabbing, but hey, it worked. It’s the pettiest, most banal moments of politicking that lay the foundations for a fascist takeover.
The first two episodes of M that screened at TIFF (the series is eight parts long) follow Mussolini towards his election to parliament. While Benito is obviously not a reliable narrator of his own story, he is somewhat candid in admitting his total lack of true beliefs. Fascism is a loser ideology built on hate, and that’s most effective when it has someone else to blame for the world’s ills. That changes depending on who he needs to appeal to. He is all for the striking farm workers until the bourgeois landowners offer to finance his bankrupt newspaper. He’ll have the socialists beaten up then suck up to their Prime Minister. Marinelli’s wonderfully expressive face is given many a close-up to show Mussolini’s surprised reactions, which soon melt into self-satisfied preening. Above all, this man is a narcissist and Marinelli nails the performativity of his leadership. The theatricalities of fascism have always been shoddy.
Wright’s theatrics, however, are a confusing offering. He’s never been afraid to overload the shot, adding a touch of the Brechtian to even the most realist of concepts. Despite not being Italian, I can see why he would have been considered an ideal choice for a Mussolini drama. When his stuff works, it’s because of its grandeur and blend of the surreal and grounded. It makes sense for a story about the rise of the right wing, led by a showman who knew the power of propaganda, to play within those structures. Certainly, M is never boring. It’s speedily cut, dramatically edited, and doesn’t stop to take a breath. Mussolini has a dream that’s shown in the form of a puppet show, for example. There’s no shortage of ideas. Wright told The Guardian that he wanted to seduce the viewer and be swept up by Mussolini’s reign of terror because ‘To demonize these characters absolves us of moral responsibility and I think that’s really, really dangerous.’ Sure, but at what point do you just seem a bit too impressed with your own flair?
There’s merit to his idea, to show how nobody is immune to these ideas or scare tactics. I merely wonder if Wright sees much of a difference between conveying that appeal and reveling in it. In the scenes of horrific violence inflicted by fascist goons, the blood spray and furiously edited cuts evoke a John Wick movie. The score, provided by Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers, is full of modern techno dance beats accompanying such brutality, which only further fetishizes it. At the Q&A following the screening, Wright said he didn’t want the music to sound old-fashioned, but the most effective moments of song in these episodes were the fascist chants that showed the growing movement and its increasing devotion to Mussolini. The rest just becomes distracting, more like a music video than anything else.
This has long been my problem with Wright. When he has nobody pulling on the reins, he becomes so enamoured with his endless flourishes that story and character don’t matter. Cyrano is gorgeous to look at but it doesn’t work as a musical because the songs clearly came second to his aesthetic. With M. Son of the Century, he sees his agenda as being one of style and substance in harmony, but the former keeps winning out. Perhaps this pays off brilliantly in later episodes. I am very interested to see how this show goes because, despite it all, I was never bored. I didn’t have time to be. There was too much going on. Yes, we’re caught up in this fascistic rot but mostly because filmmaking this saturated has little room for introspection.
I hope that later episodes build on the brief moments we get where the mask falls off. Mussolini’s wife Rachele (Benedetta Cimatti) is the only other person who gets to break the fourth wall and tell their story, and the smile on her face when she all but admits that her husband raped her is gut-wrenching. Even his family is trapped by his myth. And then there’s Margherita Sarfatti (Barbara Chichiarelli), his mistress, a Jewish socialite who is as devoted to his politics as his you-know-what.
Something this dazzlingly made can never truly be called bad but M. Son of the Century is a case of too many tropes spoiling the point. Wright said that he wanted to ‘build that empathy and then to pull the rug out and say ‘Wait a minute, do you realise what you’re engaging with?” Sure, Joe, but I have to ask: when you use the same tricks as every other Hollywood filmmaker to make violence look cool but say it’s actually a commentary on that, do you know what you’re creating?
M. Son of the Century had its North American premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. It will premiere on Sky Atlantic in the UK in 2025. It currently does not have an American release date.