Lord of the Ants [Il Signore delle Formiche] **** (2022, Luigi Lo Cascio, Leonardo Maltese, Elio Germano, Sara Serraiocco) – Classic Movie Review 12,378

Luigi Lo Cascio stars as gay Italian intellectual Aldo Braibanti, who is tried and jailed in 1968 under a Fascist-era anti-gay law. It is the story of an unlikable man unjustly persecuted and broken by an unjust law and an unjust legal system.

Director Gianni Amelio’s urgently timely 2022 Italian historical biographical drama Lord of the Ants [Il Signore delle Formiche] is based on true events of the late Sixties in Italy. It tells a truly terrible tale that needs to be retold over and over, with its lessons learnt and acted on.

Times have changed, in Italy as elsewhere, but not that much, and certainly not enough. In some places in the world, nothing has changed at all since the Dark Ages. It is the story of an unlikable man unjustly persecuted and manipulated into jail and broken and destroyed by an unjust law and an unjust legal system. It is set in the Sixties but it could be the Middle Ages.

Luigi Lo Cascio stars as noted gay Italian professor, artist, teacher, poet, playwright and director Aldo Braibanti, who is arrested in 1964, prosecuted and tried in a kind of disgusting homophobic show trial, and is jailed in 1968 under a Fascist-era anti-gay law, the crime of plagia, the act of manipulating another person either physically or psychologically.

He is broken for ever, taken away from his pupil, friend and lover Ettore (Leonardo Maltese), who is brainwashed in a psych ward by electroshock ‘treatment’, ie state torture, at the instigation of his hateful mother, and away from his own loving elderly mother, who is heartbroken.

It apparently was not a crime to be gay at the time in Italy in the mid to late 1960s, because back in the Fascist era Benito Mussolini had decided there were no such men as homosexuals in Italy, as all Italian men were virile and could not be gay. So the homophobic forces of darkness prosecute Braibanti under an obscure law forbidding manipulating another person, though they are really attacking him because he is gay of course, and using the law to criminalise homosexuality, though this term was not used explicitly in court. The story is a national shame.

In 1964, Braibanti, who had been the head of a noted artist commune in Piacenza, called the Tower, was charged with plagia after a complaint filed by angry, estranged parents of his younger lover Ettore. Poor, tragic Ettore is taken from their Rome apartment by authorities and forced into a psych ward for electroshock therapy thanks to his hateful mother (oh, and father and older brother). The preparation takes four years for the trial, which finally takes place in 1968. The kangaroo court has already made its guilty decision of course.

Braibanti is portrayed as unlikable and bad tempered, assuming an air of sneering superiority to everyone else, whereas Ettore is portrayed as thoroughly likable and charming. More screen time could have been spent examining their relationship before their downfall. As with Oscar Wilde, Braibanti’s arrogance and unlikability is a significant factor in his downfall. He remains arrogant in court, dangerously disrespecting it. He’s a target for the homophobes.

Elio Germano plays a committed journalist Ennio Scribani, who decides to tell Braibanti’s story to the newspaper public, and Sara Serraiocco plays his young student cousin Graziella, a woman of conscience and decency, the two people on Braibanti’s side, who try to stir up public support for his cause. It proves a massively uphill struggle, facing a toxic mix of hypocrisy, suspicion and censorship. Eventually Scribani’s cynical editor on the Communist-slanted newspaper gets fed up with his pro-gay reports and forces him out of his job. That’s nice too then.

There is one other interesting character, Ettore’s older brother, who seeks mentorship from Braibanti, but Braibanti mocks him and berates him for lacking the intellectual aptitude to understand the work of author Alberto Moravia. However, Braibanti finds Ettore has intellectual aptitude, but the spurned older brother warns Ettore not to see Braibanti again, and when he does, plots against him with the brothers’ mother.

[Spoiler alert] In court, the prosecutor asks for an incredibly long jail sentence, equivalent to murder, and Braibanti is sentenced to nine years. But, after an appeal, it ends up being two, thanks to him being a patriot in the war. After one final meting, Braibanti apparently never again saw Ettore, who was actually a 23-year old named Giovanni Sanfratello. Braibanti was the only person convicted in Italy of the crime of plagia, which was finally removed from the Italian penal code in 1981 because of its vagueness.

Lord of the Ants [Il Signore delle Formiche] is an extraordinarily powerful and moving film painting a picture of a horrible world in Italy back in the Sixties, though much of the story maintains its currency, relevancy and impact, and the film has all those things in abundance. It is meticulously made and beautifully acted, with the Sixties settings carefully and convincingly re-created. It is heart breaking, recalling the fate of Oscar Wilde in his 1895 trial.

The four main performances of Luigi Lo Cascio, Leonardo Maltese, Elio Germano, and Sara Serraiocco are all remarkable, very effective and hard-hitting. Maltese is appealing in some moving scenes, especially his testimony in court strongly and clearly in favour Braibanti. Elio Germano broods effectively as the concerned journalist.

It is not an easy watch, or a cheery one, but it is essential viewing, reclaiming a chapter in gay history.

And the title? Braibanti is also a myrmecologist, a person who studies ants, no doubt a metaphor for Braibanti’s communist politics and stance against fascism, since ants are a collective community, putting the needs of the whole above the individual.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,378

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

© Derek Winnert 2023 Classic Movie Review 12,378

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com