Director Joe Wright has crafted some of the most moving historical dramas of the last 20 years, from Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, and Anna Karenina, to Cyrano. In the series Mussolini: Son of the Century, he achieves something wholly darker, more sensational, and intricate, with a deep look at would-be dictator Benito Mussolini’s rise to power.
Based on Antonio’s Scurati book, M: Son of the Century, the series took six months to film, and involved a lot of time researching and planning for the tone and mood that he wanted to capture.
“I started reading as much as I could,” Wright said. “Antonio’s book, but also reading around it, listening to music, and looking at paintings and photography of the time, trying to kind of contextualize the story within the greater cultural thrust of the period.”
He looked at a lot of contemporary Italian perspectives, “talking to people as much as possible,” from academics to taxi drivers, “just trying to get a sense of how Italy felt about him and his place in their history.”
The tone of the period ended up influencing the style of the series in many ways, including the very unique score. “[I] was looking at the the futurist paintings, [and] that made me start thinking about techno music, and the idea of working with Tom Roland came from that,” he said.
The most interesting aspect of the series might be how viewers are interpreting it now, even though he filmed it months ago.
“I didn’t want the show to be didactic. I wanted to allow space for the audience to draw their own parallels if they wanted to. So I tried to set all of that aside and really just focus on who he was and what he was trying to do and and where these ideas came from.”
“What would make a man think that this was a good and righteous way forward, or did he not at all,” he said.
In the end, Wright admitted that he saw Mussolini’s work as something many people have tried to copy. “[He] wrote a rule book, or should I say a toolkit of options for amassing that kind of control and power, and people have been using those tools ever since.”
And then there is star Luca Marinelli as Mussolini.
“Luca is one of the greatest actors I’ve ever worked with, and one of my favourite human beings on the planet. He’s a deeply humane individual with a vast imagination and an imagination that’s so powerful that if he imagines it, so does the audience.”
Mussolini: Son of the Century is streaming now on Mubi. Watch the full interview with Wright above.
Photos by Andrea Pirrello, and Maureen Evans, courtesy of Mubi.
