Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Perfectly adorable

An absolute waste of money

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

I came to this after a week of living for all intents in a bankrupt country right next to Italy, the result of decades of much the same corruption and ignorance in a rotten political fraction as this film depicts, looking for threads of the knot by our always richly expressive neighbors.Much like the film on Nixon this is an attempt to show the man, here seven times prime minister of Italy, by entering his mind to imagine pieces and impressions there. Much like Nixon it's a stream of consciousness framed helter skelter as confessional to us with an onslaught of different ways to deliver the image. Nixon was the televised apology we couldn't trust, this is the condemnation in a trial that acquitted Andreotti.The admission of what it is and why comes early, as Andreotti confides to an aide that uncontrolled reactions best reveal what is human about us. All the different camera flows, humorous surreal pieces, songs and unusual edits a way to loosen control, unfreeze him from the historic narrative that he tried to control so much. It's first an act of late justice, a way to wrestle control of images from him and for him to be a stooge on a stage that we set for once.But much like Stone the intended insights on the other end of opera are often too ordinary; to humanize a man as cold and calculating as Nixon, to show that he was lonely, kept awake by guilt and that he did strive for good as he saw it in his own warped way, so that we can leave on the stage a bit of man wrestling inner demons and a bit of enigma. More frequently for my taste it all becomes a matter of flipping through style rather than contemplating a passage. But a few moments truly stand out in the furor. I did like that it's only after an hour that we discover that he has a wife in a house somewhere that he opens up to no more than to anyone else, as if that's the place he accords her in the narrative of recall. The poignant moment of the two of them watching TV that gives a sense of an entire life together, how little and much it means and how endlessly close the difference between the two. As poignant as later when, surrounded by personal guards on one of his late night walks he chances upon a worker unloading a truck, someone much his own age, who doesn't need guards on a simple walk. The glance they exchange suggests vast difference of worlds, yearning to get to the other side. The parting image of him in the trial gives this again; acquitted or not for posterity, still all this pain to control a world as if you'd take some part of it on the way out or have the chance to live another life where you could do all the things you didn't in the one you wasted.

For over 50 years, seven- time Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti ruled as the most fear politician in Italy. He was accused of masterminding a Mafia/Neo Fascist/ Vatican conspiracy to kill leaders in the Italian's government which includes party members, judges, and government journalists. Based on those true events, the movie follows that guideline in telling the life of the man known to the public as "the black pope', 'Beelzebub' and "Il Divo' brilliant play by Toni Servillo and directed by Paolo Sorrentino. Toni's Andreotti look like the Six Flag Guy if only he was a gangster. His rigid gestures and the cruel language of his voice and use of his word gives you reason why they call him the 'Prince of Darkness' and 'Hunchback'. Politics is everything to him, and politics means the pursuit of power. He is willing to get it in any cost. The movie is violence—but respectable with it. It's hard to say, if Giulio Andreotti did all those stuff, that he was accused of, but it's seems more truth than fiction. Just the fact that he repeated convictions for Mafia ties in the past decade, remains the title of "senator for life" shows how much power this man had. As of this writing, the man behind of the movie, is still alive, and not in jail. It's tells you a lot about politics in Italy. Thus it felt like a politically charged movie. The film fails to live up to the subtitle 'The extraordinary life of Giulio Andreotti". It's mostly focus on his so-call crimes, and accused acts with the Mafia, barely about the life of the man at all. The movie shows how he been able to get close to getting catch, but end up getting away. The movie pace is slow at times, and feels kinda wordy and philosophy. The cinematography is amazing; angle shots of some scenes may ask you, how on earth did they film it in that angle. Great use of props and locations, the use of slow movements frames and lights in the scenes is awesome! The text describing the names and job of the characters listed is a bit too small to see, would advices watching the movie with sub-titles. The background music is catchy. Mixed with the classic music, drumming, Italian pop and modern electronic music, the use of playing and stopping the music mid-through it, when something dramatic happens, and then picks up after it, is chilling. The use of background sounds like whispers, trains, tape rewinder, are well-used to depiction an inside look of the mind of the man. There seems to be a Godfather feel to the movie, to the point, that the fictional character Don Licio Lucchesi from the movie The Godfather Part III, a high-ranking Italian politician with close ties to the Mafia, was modeled on Andreotti's ties with the Mafia. Those who doesn't know anything about Italian history, will figure out in the first 5 minutes opening of the movie Il Divo that will definitive summary of Italian political history where sadly corruption and murder is the key to power. Watch the cold, detached, and analytical movie throughout, and ask yourself when finish. How does a man like this get away with murder? Not all movies, the good guys win and the bad guys pay the price for their crimes.

A beautiful film; exquisite cinematography, locations and costumes. The acting is excellent throughout and the whole film has a fantastic soundtrack and audio mix.Il Divo is a surreal take on the real-life events of late twentieth- century Italian politics, centred on the life of long-serving politician Giulio Andreotti. For non-Italians and those unfamiliar with the subject matter, it might be best to watch the film twice and to read up on the facts of the story in between.Possibly, one of the most beautiful political thrillers ever made; dark, haunting, majestic and wonderfully bizarre.

Having spent some time living in Italy back in the nineties,I was baffled how a man like Berlusconi could be considered as a leader. I (and most Italians) knew he was a crook, that he almost certainly had Mafia connections, and that he was a power mad, sex crazed 'little man'. He owned the three major TV channels(Rai 1, 2, 3) that constantly ran propaganda ad's saying what a nice man he was, accompanied by posters in the countries largest super market chain, which he just happened to own (Citta Marketta). Yet being an outsider I had little concept of Italy's political forum - I was truly baffled. Well, after five minutes of being introduced to Andreotti in this film, I had it all worked out, Burlosconi was the lesser of two evils, yet preferable as he wasn't quite as evil as those he was replacing. If ever I need to show a film of a true psychopath it wouldn't be any Hannibal movie, (he did recognise right from wrong, and only punished the 'guilty'). Andreotti is the personification of a psychopath - chilling in his lack of emotion - to the point where even his compadres fear him so kiss hiss backside in the pursuit of a valid 'friendship' - all skilfully portrayed in this biog. Yet the most telling thing about this story is that he got away with it, despite a wealth of evidence implicating him in corruption, murder, assassination etc, one court after another is overturned in its findings and the man lives his life with only short term punishment at best, THIS IS ITALY, WATCH AND LEARN, thanks.