(ANSA) - ROME, 21 SEPT -
"A militant and not very affectionate Dante has always been celebrated and so at school we hated him, they did everything to get him away and instead we must bring him closer to us. I always thought that the Divine Poet should be compensated".
So today a visibly satisfied Pupi Avati told DANTE about him, a film he pursued for twenty years and which he finally made, in cinemas from 29 September with 01. Does art justify a life?
"Certainly yes in the case of Dante and Boccaccio and perhaps this also applies to me even if, I must confess, the best gift for my wife will be to say: I will stop making films", says the director at the Casa del Cinema.
This is the movie.
We are in 1350 and Giovanni Boccaccio (Sergio Castellitto) is commissioned to bring ten florins of
gold as symbolic compensation to Sister Beatrice (Valeria d'Obici), daughter of Dante Alighieri (Alessandro Sperduti), a nun in Ravenna in the monastery of Santo Stefano degli Ulivi.
Dante died in exile in 1321 but his fame spread everywhere.
His last twenty years have been terrible looking for hospitality after a sentence to the stake and beheading inflicted on both him and his sons who in turn fled from Florence.
The ten florins would be the symbolic compensation for the confiscation of assets and the unjust sentence.
Against that part of the ecclesial world that considers the Comedy a diabolical work, Boccaccio accepts this assignment also to be able to carry out an investigation on Dante that allows him to narrate the human story and the injustices suffered.
During his long journey Boccaccio, in addition to his daughter, will meet those who, in the last years of the Ravenna exile, gave shelter and offered hospitality and who, on the contrary, rejected and put the exile to flight.
From Florence to Ravenna, Boccaccio stops in the same convents, villages and castles, all to reconstruct his entire history.
In the cast Enrico Lo Verso, Alessandro Haber, Gianni Cavina, Leopoldo Mastelloni, Ludovica Pedetta, Morena Gentili, Romano Reggiani, Carlotta Gamba (Beatrice), Paolo Graziosi, Mariano Rigillo, Eliana Miglio, Valeria D'Obici, Giulio Pizzirani (old Dante) , Erica Blanc, Milena Vukotic and Nico Toffoli.
"'In the middle of the journey of our life' - says Castellitto - is a bit of a psychiatric piece,
no one has ever dared to tell about his life, much less Dante's Divine Comedy has remained a single word and that cannot be represented.
They forced us to study him, but no one ever told us that he had been thrown out, he was a soldier and he had also been poor.
In short, he was one of us.
But Dante was also a poet, one capable of entering a black hole and pulling out a gold nugget.
However - concludes the actor - he has always been a boy or else an artist dies ". And Castellitto again:" This is a film that stinks.
Boccaccio, if you think about it well, has made a long and very tiring journey, he has scabies, he is hungry.
And all these imperfections of man can all be seen. "Parallel with Dante?" Yes, adolescence - says Pupi Avati -.
When I was fifteen I went after a certain Paola Zuccotti for three years without ever hearing her voice.
In short, I fully recognized myself in the love story that Dante tells in Vita Nova. "Finally, to those who ask Pupi Avati why in Italy comedies are mainly made, he replies:" It is not something that concerns only cinema, but in particular it is Italy that has deprived itself of any ambition.
Now no one has any more and if he does one thing he says he also has a plan b.
Now those who have plan b eventually find themselves doing that.
Instead, it took me twenty years to make this film and this shows that dreams are possible even if today no one believes in them anymore "
love that Dante tells in the Nova life. "Finally, to those who ask Pupi Avati why in Italy comedies are mainly made, he replies:" It is not something that concerns only cinema, but in particular it is Italy that has deprived itself of every ambition.
Now no one has any more and if he does one thing he says he also has a plan b.
Now those who have plan b eventually find themselves doing that.
Instead, it took me twenty years to make this film and this shows that dreams are possible even if today no one believes in them anymore "
love that Dante tells in the Nova life. "Finally, to those who ask Pupi Avati why in Italy comedies are mainly made, he replies:" It is not something that concerns only cinema, but in particular it is Italy that has deprived itself of every ambition.
Now no one has any more and if he does one thing he says he also has a plan b.
Now those who have plan b eventually find themselves doing that.
Instead, it took me twenty years to make this film and this shows that dreams are possible even if today no one believes in them anymore "
Now those who have plan b eventually find themselves doing that.
Instead, it took me twenty years to make this film and this shows that dreams are possible even if today no one believes in them anymore "
Now those who have plan b eventually find themselves doing that.
Instead, it took me twenty years to make this film and this shows that dreams are possible even if today no one believes in them anymore "