If cinema aspires to the condition of the fairground ride, then Paolo Sorrentino’s Il Divo is a Ferris wheel careering off its base and vaulting over some oncoming traffic. A breathtaking, breakneck account of the sinister, cynical machinations of modern Italian politics, this startling film takes the viewer by the scruff of the neck and never lets go.
Bang. Here are some fancy inter-titles, a crash-course in historical context. Now, whoosh, off we go around a Gorgon’s knot of Vatican and mafia interests, with seven-time Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti at the impossible centre. It’s a biopic. It’s not a biopic. Toni Servillo is a magnificent, Shakespearean animal lurking at the heart of the film, but his god-like tentacles extend far beyond the golden palaces where he plies his trade. Journalists are assassinated. Judges are swayed. Witnesses disappear.
If he is all things to all men, so too is Il Divo. It’s Fellini with a skateboard. It’s Gomorrah in Olympus. It’s The Godfather on acid. Thanks to The Consequences of Love and The Family Friend, the director is a proven master of style, but here the razzmatazz is shanghaied into the service of scathing satire.
The heady aesthetics and labyrinthine schemes ferment into the recreation of a shocking tribunal during Andreotti’s 1990s tenure, when his government’s links with organised crime came into sharp focus. One by one, his larger-than-life colleagues, replete with comic book designations – The Shark, The Priest – resign or die by their own hand. Andreotti, ever the survivor, hangs in until the bitter end, though at what cost?
Sorrentino maintains a lofty distance from the dirty tricks. Il Divo is far too exhilarating to be confused with mere polemic. The score throbs with everything from Sibelius to Trio’s ’Da Da Da’. The camera never ceases. The shots are unnervingly novel. What an ingenious way to tear strips off the establishment.   
See it. Consider the national parallels. Get mad. Get even.