BERLIN. An existential, lysergic, dark, hopeless, but completely engaging noir, this “Dostoevsky”, a Sky Original TV series created, written and directed by Fabio and Damiano D’Innocenzo, premiered yesterday at the 74th Berlin Film Festival in the Berlinale Special section. to arrive at the cinema soon.
«We wanted to tell the winter of a human being by intercepting the flavours, the scents, a melancholy winter that never ends. And this with an archetype, that of the detective, but stripped down. We also wanted to talk about the possibility of a change, that is, of being able to choose what to become”, says Fabio D’Innocenzo in Berlin. “The Man in Winter” of this six-episode series shot on a Lazio coast «that looks like Alabama» is Filippo Timi in the role of Enzo Vitello, a detective with a painful past and who uses drugs to avoid disappearing completely. «A policeman with a broken past and an inevitable future who investigates the blood trail of a ruthless serial murderer nicknamed Dostoevsky due to the letters full of macabre details that he leaves at the crime scenes», say the directors. He lives in an isolated and dilapidated house on the river with a daughter Ambra (a very good Carlotta Gamba) who he had sent away for an extraordinary and unspeakable reason without giving spoilers. Obsessed by the words of the serial killer, Vitiello’s madness grows, his task is no longer an investigation, but a descent into hell full of demons. «A policeman and a murderer, both intangible, elusive, ghosts, who proceed in the dark in the darkness of conscience, who hunt each other but also caress, dissecting together a solitude that absorbs and encompasses everything. In short, Dostoevsky follows the most complex investigation of all: the real crime is living” say the two Roman directors. A story of the “last” «which is more congenial to us and which when we abandoned it for a middle-class story (Latin America? Ed.) it didn’t work». Also in the cast are Gabriel Montesi (Favolacce, Siccità, Romulus, Christian) and Federico Vanni (Chiara Lubich, Io sono l’abisso). A film full of apodictic phrases and cursed scenes (above all a close-up colonoscopy undergone by Timi) in which there is an absence of judgement: «We must not fall into the trap of judgement, this is also our beauty, we are already in a dictatorship of thoughts” underlines Damiano D’Innocenzo. Of course it takes a lack of judgment says Timi, «but for me it’s not a problem. After having worked so hard on Shakespeare, let go of any judgement. And then you tell it to me who already stutters and can’t see a damn thing, so if I have to make a narrative that goes against the trend I’ll throw myself into it even if I’m pissed off. The D’Innocenzos are fantastic” adds the actor, “but they don’t give you directions. I then understood that I had to be profound and fragile at the same time and I thought of Carmelo Bene who said that the actor is femininity brought to consciousness. What enlightened and supported me was a phrase from D’Innocenzo’s in the screenplay: “In the sky a ferocious storm like a quarrel between brothers”. The two directors were already at the Berlinale on their debut with “The Land of Enough”, in 2018, and then with “Favolacce” in 2020, Silver Bear for screenplay.
2024-02-20 00:17:16
#DInnocenzos #Berlinale #Dostoevsky
