Joe Wright on the Importance of Making Benito Mussolini Series ‘M’: It’s a ‘Howl Against the Current Rise of the Far-Right’
British director Joe Wright, who helmed Winston Churchill drama “Darkest Hour,” is at the Venice Film Festival with another historical piece, high-end TV drama “M. Son of the Century.” The series chronicles Benito Mussolini’s rise to power and is particularly timely as populist leaders are sprouting up all over the world.
Based on Italian author Antonio Scurati’s eponymous bestselling novel which traces the birth of Fascism in Italy, “M” reconstructs Mussolini’s ascent with an innovative approach. Luca Marinelli (“The Eight Mountains,” “Martin Eden”) plays the despotic leader during the period between 1919, when he founded the fascist party in Italy, and 1925 when – having gained power with the 1922 March on Rome – Mussolini made an infamous speech in the Italian Chamber of Deputies declaring himself a dictator.
More from Variety
“M” is produced by Sky Studios and Lorenzo Mieli for Fremantle-owned The Apartment Pictures in collaboration with Pathé and Small Forward. The show, which was largely shot at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios, will play on Sky in 2025 across its European territories (U.K., Ireland Italy, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) with Fremantle handling international sales.
Wright speaks to Variety about the present-day relevancy of “M” amid the rise of the far-right and why he chose to imbue it with a throbbing techno score.
How did “M” come to be?
I met Lorenzo [Mieli] while we were both doing publicity rounds, me with “Cyrano” and him with [Paolo Sorrentino’s] “The Hand of God,” so we saw each other a lot. I am a big admirer of his work. I also told him that I was a big admirer of [screenwriter] Stefano Bises’ work in “Gomorrah.” He asked if I would I be interested in doing something about Mussolini, and I immediately said yes. There is no question that I’m very concerned by the rise of the populist far-right. And this seemed a way, for me personally, of addressing the roots of this movement and learning about where it came from.
Your Churchill piece “Darkest Hour” was fairly straightforward. But for “M,” you chose a very innovative narrative approach that is close to pop opera. What inspired that?
I think this piece is a lot more politicized than “Darkest Hour” and is really a howl against the current rise of the far-right. I employed a lot of sort of Brechtian techniques. I was aware that we needed to convey the seductive qualities of Mussolini, but I never wanted the audience to be seduced by him. We employ moments where we empathize with him, we humanize him. And then we kind of pull the rug from the audience’s feet and ask them to employ a certain level of critical distance. Not only of Mussolini, but of their own reactions to him.
How did you come up with the show’s bold concept?
The idea, the concept was a kind of mash-up between “Man With a Movie Camera” [the 1929 seminal avant-guarde doc by Dziga Vertov], Howard Hawks’ Scarface and ’90s rave culture, which seemed to have a lot of ties back to the futurist movement.
Talk to me about casting Luca Marinelli and how you guys worked together.
Lorenzo Mieli suggested that I meet Luca and watch his work. I did and discovered a talent that I’d never come into contact with before. We met and discussed and shared our fears and concerns, but found that we were quite simpatico in terms of our need to make this piece of work despite our fears, or maybe because of our fears. Working with Luca has been one of the great privileges of my life. I genuinely believe that he is one of the greatest actors living today. He’s certainly up there with Gary Oldman. And we had a very, very, very close relationship. It was tender and honest and very open. It was important to both of us that we really dug deep into ourselves in relation to this character, and even found parts of ourselves that were reflected in him. We both agreed that we wanted to make sure that he was a real human being, and that our portrayal of him was honest. He is the politicization of toxic masculinity, and he is the worst of all of us. So we had to dig down and find that. Because it can’t just be a kind of political history lesson — it has to be a story about a human being. It has to be honest.
What to do consider to be the single trait of Benito Mussolini that kind of carries over today, when you see somewhat similar figures on the global political stage?
Exploitation. Exploitation of the legitimate concerns of the populace that he and subsequent such totalitarian leaders and far-right populist leaders address and then exploit. They take legitimate concerns that many people have and use fear and violence – if not physical violence, then a violent rhetoric – in that exploitation.
Talk to me about your decision to work with Tom Rowlands of the Chemical Brothers to give the show a techno score.
I knew that I didn’t want the piece to feel like a kind of stuffy period drama biopic. I knew that it needed a kind of punk aesthetic. And so the choice to work with Tom Rowlands of the Chemical Brothers was about trying to convey some of the energy that was behind the emergence of the fascist movement. It seemed that looking at the aesthetics of the period, in particular futurism, it was all about energy and momentum and movement. And that seemed to work really well with the kind of techno score that was available with working with Tom. It was also important to me that we reach a younger audience. I’m not interested in preaching only to the converted. I doubt we’ll ever really change a hardcore fascist’s mind, but reaching younger audiences who might not have thought about Mussolini, might not have thought about the roots of the far-right, might not have considered where it could lead them, that was really important.
You shot a large portion of “M” at Rome’s Cinecitta Studios. How did that factor into its aesthetic?
The show reflects a kind of collage, just like techno music is also a kind of collage. And that felt kind of correct for the material. The different points of view, the quite cubist points of view, we often offer. And in the Brechtian sense, there was a kind of artifice to the piece. The performances are incredibly real and incredibly intimate, but there is a sense of artifice to what we’re doing. We’re presenting the piece and saying that this is not a documentary, but it’s something that we have made for you that is based entirely on fact. This is what happened.
Best of Variety
Sign up for Variety's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
