PenOutOfTime

It is a testament to this film that it leaves enough of the voice and actions of its protagonist, that you can see another way of looking at the man, underneath this film's message. At the level of craft, this film is also quite strong with cinematography and especially, soundtrack which stand out, and could be used as an example in film class.

Ultimately however, this film fails in that it is a biopic, but one that places us almost in the shoes of its protagonist, without at all attempting to look at things through his own eyes.

As an example of this, when Andreotti walks about in the city normally even though there is security accompanying him, rather than riding in a motorcade, this is treated as if he is caged in misery, rather than Andreotti simply being used to the situation, and not paying much mind to the security, or for that matter, considering that perhaps he enjoys the power of an armed entourage.

Now here I want to be very careful, because it is perfectly possible that Andreotti did regard the security as a burden, but this very same approach is taken with every other distinctive characteristic of Andreotti's, including his own personality.

Andreotti was famously straight faced and calm in his demeanor, but famous for his clever and witty remarks. Instead of treating him as interacting with others as a "straight man" like Oliver Hardy or Bob Newhart, Andreotti is portrayed as being entirely expressionless, trapped inside a mask.

Indeed the actor playing Andreotti plays the man as being ENTIRELY expressionless, and adds to the artificial effect by hunching and walking in a spastic way. This effect is impressive in its consistency, but entirely fails to seem natural, even to the point of being the believable gait and demeanor of an injured or disabled person.

This same approach, where the emotions and priorities of a person decidedly not the protagonist are projected upon him, utterly shapes what is shown in political terms as well. Andreotti was a devoted retail politician, who loved to meet with constituents and solve their problems or provide help. The film is good enough to show us a trace of this, with Andreotti doing constituent service every weekend, but overall, the focus is on good or evil actions as an almost abstract exercise of power. Since the abstract use of power was not at all what Andreotti was focused on, or motivated by, the content doesn't connect.

Whether one knows Italian politics or not is not a key to deciphering the film; rather one needs to understand Italian politics ahead of time because what is being shown to us has very little cause and effect relationship.

Altogether, there is a great deal of talent on display, but the effort seems to be wasted. Many people saw Andreotti as a sort of enigma, and this film seems to have attempted to preserve that impression to leave a "realistic" image of Andreotti based on only superficial impersonation.

This film is structured around the question of who killed Nancy Spungen, companion to Sid Vicious. The weakness of the film is that the filmmakers have not structured the film in a rigorous way to make their case questioning the conventional wisdom on the matter.

The actual effect of this lack of strict focus, is paradoxically, a masterpiece in capturing the character and spirit of both the people involved, and of the music scene that they came from.

Punk was, and is, purposely confrontational, and many punk documentaries are effectively impaled on these clashes; stuck on the 'spikes' of punk, and never really capturing a complete image of either the people or the scene. In setting out to chronicle a death, this film has actually captured that life.

It would probably be foolish to imagine that any film can actually tell you all about punk; who has seen a documentary that actually even had all of the important bands in it? This film is not all of punk by any means, but it is one of the best documentaries to have come out of it, and that is what really matters.

If you are focused on the film from the perspective of the mystery however, this film is still a great success, at least if you would like to make up your own mind. Most films of this sort would have the filmmaker smacking away with remark after remark, all up and down the length of the film, like a cook tenderizing a piece of meat. In this case, it seems like such remarks had to be pasted onto the end of the film, but since both sides of the evidence are presented relatively naturally along the course of the film, the effect is to create overall, an unusually unbiased presentation. This documentary is rough around the edges, but it is great.

There are two notable strengths about this documentary about Hitler, as compared to others. First, it has very good access with its interviews, talking to many people who are not commonly seen elsewhere. Secondly, it similarly has very good access to original footage.

The problem with this is that much of the original footage is in fact propaganda footage, and this series, while reversing the evil message, does not give one as much historical information as would be desirable for so long a program.

Basically these shows are making a great point of showing you that Hitler is bad. Perhaps this is very useful for less informed people in Germany, but for well informed people outside of Germany the effect is repetitive, long winded, and while true enough, propagandistic.

It is reasonable, as a historic matter, to mention Hitler's repetitive schedule for example, and it is reasonable to surmise that this reveals something about the character of the evil dictator. Nonetheless, it seems somewhat ridiculous to use horror movie *shock/reveal* music scoring when one is describing a breakfast of toast etc., no matter how often someone eats it.

This series has a paradoxical combination of drawn-out footage that would be interesting to someone out of Germany only if they are very interested in the subject, but a message and information density that is aimed at someone with little knowledge of the subject. The combination will not appeal to everyone, and many history buffs will want to explore other documentaries on the subject first.