THEddu – The last godfather – airing tonight at 9.20pm on Rai 3 –, is a film inspired by the life and hiding of Matteo Messina Denaro, very powerful mafia boss arrested in 2023, a few months before his death and on the run since 1993. Straddling drama and grotesque, Piazza and Grassadonia’s film shows the reasoning mechanisms of crime from the inside organized. The protagonists are the excellent Elio Germano and Toni Servillo, supported by Barbora Bobulova and Chiara Bassermann.
Iddu – The last godfatherthe plot of the film tonight 21 May on Rai 3
In Sicily in the early 2000s, Catello Palumbo (Toni Servillo) is a former local Christian Democrat politician of Campania origins, sentenced to six years for external competition in a mafia-type association. Locked up in the Cuneo prison, the man is offered freedom by the secret services in exchange for the his help in capturing his one-time godson: the mafia boss Matteo (Elio Germano).
Catello thus began an epistolary correspondence with the latternow tired of his life as a fugitive, in the hope of tricking him into revealing it by mistake, in one of his pizzini (the sheets written and sent “manually” to the recipients), your hiding place. Catello’s plan, however, fails and only Matteo’s family members end up arrestedwho, out of revenge, will then have the former mayor’s son-in-law killed.
Elio Germano and Toni Servillo in “Iddu – The Last Godfather”. (01 Distribution)
A film inspired by the life of boss Matteo Messina Denaro
Freely inspired by Matteo Messina Denaro’s period of hiding, Iddu it is not a biopic on the figure of the former head of Cosa Nostra (died in 2023 after more than 30 years in hiding). But rather an investigation into the symbolic and human dimension of the bosson his enigmatic personality and on system of relationships, complicity and ambiguity which have fueled his criminal power for years.
An undergrowth moves around Messina Denaro of characters suspended between reverence, fear and silence. A microcosm that the directors outline with care and without avoiding the excess of the grotesque, so that the film turns out suspended between a detective story and a Greek tragedy, capable of showing the mafia and its variations between the ridiculous and the childish. Avoiding to mitigate its violence and criminal scope, nor suffer its fascination.
Filmed between Salemi, Selinunte, Sciacca and Trapani, Iddu – The last godfather can count not only on the performances of its two great leading actors, but also on a beautiful soundtrack composed by Colapesce. A score where the Sicilian singer he was inspired by the music of the films of Elio Petri and Pietro Germi of the 60s and 70s.
The cast of Iddu – The last godfather: a great acting performance by Toni Servillo and Elio Germano
One of the most appreciable aspects of Iddu it is undoubtedly the job of the interpretersin particular that of Elio Germano and Toni Servillo. Protagonists of an acting duel that supports much of the film.
In fact, Elio Germano constructs very well a Matteo Messina Denaro far from stereotypes: His boss appears fragile, obsessivealmost consumed by his own invisibility. A multifaceted interpretation but above all capable of giving back together the coldness and vulnerability of the fugitive.
On the other side Servillo, on the other hand, gives life to Catello Palumbo with a more theatrical and grotesque registerdeliberately over the top to accentuate the moral transformism and ambiguous nature. The Neapolitan actor thus manages to transform the character into a tragicomic mask that reflects the decadence of an entire social system. In short, a character who would not have looked out of place in a Paolo Sorrentino film.
